I am not very familiar with this kind of stuff either but I have read through "Beej's Guide to Network Programming" https://beej.us/guide/bgnet/html/split/. Which seems like enough to implement something like OP posted.

As for db's/other interesting things, I haven't read them myself but this site seems solid https://build-your-own.org/. If anyone has any real experience with this site, I would love to hear it!