byte order conversion for signed integer

Question

I have a problem translate byte order between host(CPU dependent) and network(big endian). These are all the APIs(in "arpa/inet.h" for Linux) I've found that might solve my problem.

 uint32_t htonl(uint32_t hostlong);

 uint16_t htons(uint16_t hostshort);

 uint32_t ntohl(uint32_t netlong);

 uint16_t ntohs(uint16_t netshort);

Except for one thing, they only handle unsigned integer(2 bytes or 4 byte).

So is there any approach to handle signed integer case? In other words, how to implement the following functions(APIs)?

 int32_t htonl(int32_t hostlong);

 int16_t htons(int16_t hostshort);

 int32_t ntohl(int32_t netlong);

 int16_t ntohs(int16_t netshort);

Answer 1

Technically speaking, it doesn't matter what the value is inside the variable since you just want to borrow the functionality. When assigning a signed to an unsigned, its value changes but the bits are the same. So converting it back to signed is alright.

Edit: As amrit said, it is a duplicate of Signed Integer Network and Host Conversion.