help with connecting to server for new plugin development

[tinytown.au at gmail.com]

Hi,
I’m trying to learn how to create a libpurple plugin for a chat/
messanger clinet used at my work.

I’ve gone through the Pidgin documentation and help files on how to
create C plug-ins .
I’ve had success in building the plugins as per the instructions on
the tutorials o the pidgin site.  And have managed to build and
compile ‘protocol’ plugins that seem to load up ok in pidgin and finch
using the libpurple frame work on linux.
However I seem to have difficulty in working out/understanding how to
connect/communicate to another server.
I’ve looked at the source files of some of the other prtocols like
yahoo and sip (simple) but they seem already much more than what I
need for now.

Could someone help explain how I would connect to a server  and issue
a command.
Possibly, how would I modify the example code ( pidgin-2.5.0/libpurple/
example/nullclient.c  ) or ( pidgin-2.5.0/libpurple/protocols/null/
nullprpl.c ) to connect to a server running on my pc (localhost) port
3789.

Admittedly I’m pretty new to C programming, so I was hoping for simple
guides or examples.

Thanks
Tony