Socket means in java

Lesson 1: Socket Communications

Java Programming Language Basics, Part 1, finished with a simple network communications example using the Remote Method Invocation (RMI) application programming interface (API). The RMI example allows multiple client programs to communicate with the same server program without any explicit code to do this because the RMI API is built on sockets and threads.

This lesson presents a simple sockets-based program to introduce the concepts of sockets and multi-threaded programming. A multi-threaded program performs multiple tasks at one time such as fielding simultaneous requests from many client programs.

What are Sockets and Threads?

A socket is a software endpoint that establishes bidirectional communication between a server program and one or more client programs. The socket associates the server program with a specific hardware port on the machine where it runs so any client program anywhere in the network with a socket associated with that same port can communicate with the server program.

A server program typically provides resources to a network of client programs. Client programs send requests to the server program, and the server program responds to the request.

One way to handle requests from more than one client is to make the server program multi-threaded. A multi-threaded server creates a thread for each communication it accepts from a client. A thread is a sequence of instructions that run independently of the program and of any other threads.

Using threads, a multi-threaded server program can accept a connection from a client, start a thread for that communication, and continue listening for requests from other clients.

About the Examples

The examples for this lesson consist of two versions of the client and server program pair adapted from the FileIO.java application presented in Part 1, Lesson 6: File Access and Permissions.

Example 1 sets up a client and server communication between one server program and one client program. The server program is not multi-threaded and cannot handle requests from more than one client.

Example 2 converts the server program to a multi-threaded version so it can handle requests from more than one client.

Example 1: Client-Side Behavior

The client program presents a simple user interface and prompts for text input. When you click the Click Me button, the text is sent to the server program. The client program expects an echo from the server and prints the echo it receives on its standard output.

Example 1: Server-Side Behavior

The server program presents a simple user interface, and when you click the Click Me button, the text received from the client is displayed. The server echoes the text it receives whether or not you click the Click Me button.

Example 1: Compile and Run

To run the example programs, start the server program first. If you do not, the client program cannot establish the socket connection. Here are the compiler and interpreter commands to compile and run the example.

 javac SocketServer.java javac SocketClient.java java SocketServer java SocketClient 

Example 1: Server-Side Program

The server program establishes a socket connection on Port 4321 in its listenSocket method. It reads data sent to it and sends that same data back to the server in its actionPerformed method.

listenSocket Method

The listenSocket method creates a ServerSocket object with the port number on which the server program is going to listen for client communications. The port number must be an available port, which means the number cannot be reserved or already in use. For example, Unix systems reserve ports 1 through 1023 for administrative functions leaving port numbers greater than 1024 available for use.

public void listenSocket() < try< server = new ServerSocket(4321); >catch (IOException e)

listenSocket Socket server.accept Socket

listenSocket BufferedReader client PrintWriter

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What Is a Socket?

Normally, a server runs on a specific computer and has a socket that is bound to a specific port number. The server just waits, listening to the socket for a client to make a connection request.

On the client-side: The client knows the hostname of the machine on which the server is running and the port number on which the server is listening. To make a connection request, the client tries to rendezvous with the server on the server’s machine and port. The client also needs to identify itself to the server so it binds to a local port number that it will use during this connection. This is usually assigned by the system.

If everything goes well, the server accepts the connection. Upon acceptance, the server gets a new socket bound to the same local port and also has its remote endpoint set to the address and port of the client. It needs a new socket so that it can continue to listen to the original socket for connection requests while tending to the needs of the connected client.

On the client side, if the connection is accepted, a socket is successfully created and the client can use the socket to communicate with the server.

The client and server can now communicate by writing to or reading from their sockets.

A socket is one endpoint of a two-way communication link between two programs running on the network. A socket is bound to a port number so that the TCP layer can identify the application that data is destined to be sent to.

An endpoint is a combination of an IP address and a port number. Every TCP connection can be uniquely identified by its two endpoints. That way you can have multiple connections between your host and the server.

The java.net package in the Java platform provides a class, Socket , that implements one side of a two-way connection between your Java program and another program on the network. The Socket class sits on top of a platform-dependent implementation, hiding the details of any particular system from your Java program. By using the java.net.Socket class instead of relying on native code, your Java programs can communicate over the network in a platform-independent fashion.

Additionally, java.net includes the ServerSocket class, which implements a socket that servers can use to listen for and accept connections to clients. This lesson shows you how to use the Socket and ServerSocket classes.

If you are trying to connect to the Web, the URL class and related classes ( URLConnection , URLEncoder ) are probably more appropriate than the socket classes. In fact, URLs are a relatively high-level connection to the Web and use sockets as part of the underlying implementation. See Working with URLs for information about connecting to the Web via URLs.

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Lesson: All About Sockets

URL s and URLConnection s provide a relatively high-level mechanism for accessing resources on the Internet. Sometimes your programs require lower-level network communication, for example, when you want to write a client-server application.

In client-server applications, the server provides some service, such as processing database queries or sending out current stock prices. The client uses the service provided by the server, either displaying database query results to the user or making stock purchase recommendations to an investor. The communication that occurs between the client and the server must be reliable. That is, no data can be dropped and it must arrive on the client side in the same order in which the server sent it.

TCP provides a reliable, point-to-point communication channel that client-server applications on the Internet use to communicate with each other. To communicate over TCP, a client program and a server program establish a connection to one another. Each program binds a socket to its end of the connection. To communicate, the client and the server each reads from and writes to the socket bound to the connection.

What Is a Socket?

A socket is one end-point of a two-way communication link between two programs running on the network. Socket classes are used to represent the connection between a client program and a server program. The java.net package provides two classes—Socket and ServerSocket—that implement the client side of the connection and the server side of the connection, respectively.

Reading from and Writing to a Socket

This page contains a small example that illustrates how a client program can read from and write to a socket.

Writing a Client/Server Pair

The previous page showed an example of how to write a client program that interacts with an existing server via a Socket object. This page shows you how to write a program that implements the other side of the connection—a server program.

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