munterfi/basiccomm

Socket programming at the base communication layer level.

basiccomm

This project provides a Java implementation of basic client-server / consumer-service communication using sockets.

Public API

The public API consists of the following classes and interface:

• Client: sends requests in the form of messages from a consumer to the server / service listening on a port.
• Server: binds to a port on the host using a ServerSocket and waits for connections.
• Message: record class that stores the data (payload) along with a header that contains the size of the message as a byte array.
• MessageHandler: interface that determines how the server should respond to a request message with a response message.

Internal

The internal classes are used by the public API. They include:

• ClientHandler: accepts a new ClientSocket from the server when a client makes a request and answers the request in a separate thread, allowing the server to remain available for further requests.
• MessageWriter: writes the bytes of a message to an output stream.
• MessageReader: first reads the header containing the message size from a socket output stream, then reads the bytes of the entire message (based on the size) and converts them into a Message.