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Is this the correct way to implement multithreading on Server side of concurrent client/server setup?

I have created this code snippet in both a single threaded version and multithreaded for a client/server setup I have going. I have tested both (recording the avg turn around time) and have gotten EXTREMELY similar results within margin of error when running multiple simple server commands at once. have I implememnted my client handler wrong?
This is my first time trying to implement a multithreaded server and from my understanding it just a matter of putting in a client handler being
`
class ServerThread extends Thread {
private Socket socket;
public ServerThread(Socket socket) {
this.socket = socket;
}
`
below is the snippet of the whole server code.
`
public class Server {
public static void main(String[] args) {
if (args.length < 1) return;
int port = Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
try (ServerSocket serverSocket = new ServerSocket(port)) {
System.out.println("Server is listening on port " + port);
while (true) {
Socket socket = serverSocket.accept();
System.out.println("New client connected");
new ServerThread(socket).start();
}
} catch (IOException ex) {
System.out.println("Server exception: " + ex.getMessage());
ex.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
class ServerThread extends Thread {
private Socket socket;
public ServerThread(Socket socket) {
this.socket = socket;
}
public void run() {
try {
InputStream input = socket.getInputStream();
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(input));
OutputStream output = socket.getOutputStream();
PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(output, true);
String text;
do {
text = reader.readLine(); // reads text from client
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(text);
BufferedReader stdout = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));
String outputLine;
while ((outputLine = stdout.readLine()) != null) { // while serverMsg is not empty keep printing
writer.println(outputLine);
}
stdout.close();
writer.println("ENDCMD");
// Text here should just write back directly what the server is reading...?
}
while (!text.toLowerCase().equals("exit"));
socket.close();
} catch (IOException ex) {
System.out.println("Server exception: " + ex.getMessage());
ex.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
`

I have tested both (recording the avg turn around time) and have gotten EXTREMELY similar results within margin of error when running multiple simple server commands at once. have I implememnted my client handler wrong?
If you are not making a new connection for each command that you send, then this would be expected. Since each connection runs on one thread, a multi-threaded approach, as you have shown, would have the same speed as if you didn't make a new thread for each connection. The difference is that, without multi-threading, you can only have one connection at a time.

Server doesn't listen to requests

as a part of my homework I have to build two classes one listener and one that is making the requests to the server (the server is already written by my teacher and I don't know how code looks like). In theory: The server that I'm connected to should reply with the exact same requests I sent to him. But in practice I get nothing back.
public class Listenerthread extends Thread {
Socket s;
Scanner answerServer;
public Listenerthread(Socket socket) {
this.s = socket;
this.answerServer = new Scanner(new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(s.getInputStream())));
}
public void run() {
System.out.println("Listening to the responses from the server......");
while (true) {
if (answerServer.hasNext()) {
System.out.println(answerServer.nextLine());
}
}
}
}
public class Mainthread {
public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException {
Socket s = new Socket("someServer", 9999);
Listenerthread server = new Listenerthread(s);
server.start();
if (s.isConnected()) {
System.out.println("Connected");
}
String req = "Heyyy mate"; // server should sent me this back
PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(s.getOutputStream()));
pw.println(req);
pw.flush();
//pw.close();
//s.close();
}
}

Update: A comment that OP left on the question after I started writing this answer shows that OP does not actually need to handle the server side of the communications. I will leave this answer for now in case it could still be useful.
When you have a client/server model, you should use a ServerSocket on the server side, as you alluded to in your question but then do not appear to have done in your code.
ServerSocket
Here is a ServerSocket example that may clear that up.
ServerSocket serverSocket;
public void serverSocketTest()
{
serverSocket = new ServerSocket(9999);
// each of the below methods will happen on separate threads
new Thread(this::serverSideAcceptConnectionFromClient).start();
new Thread(this::clientSideConnectToServer).start();
}
public void clientSideConnectToServer()
{
try {
System.out.println("Client is trying to connect to server...");
Socket connectionToServer = new Socket("localhost", 9999);
OutputStream thisGoesToTheServer = connectionToServer.getOutputStream();
InputStream thisIsDataComingFromServer = connectionToServer.getInputStream();
System.out.println("Client successfully connected to server.");
} catch(IOException ex) {
System.out.println("Connection to server failed. (" + ex + ")");
}
}
public void serverSideAcceptConnectionFromClient()
{
try {
System.out.println("Server is listening for potential clients...");
Socket connectionFromClient = serverSocket.accept();
InputStream thisIsDataComingFromClient = connectionFromClient.getInputStream();
OutputStream thisIsGoesBackOutToClient = connectionFromClient.getOutputStream();
System.out.println("Server accepted a client");
} catch(IOException ex) {
System.out.println("Error while listening for clients. (" + ex + ")");
}
}

Server is not sending back an acknowledgment to Client

I have my server code below over here:
public void startServer() {
ServerSocket listener = selectUnusedPortFromRange(1024, 65535);
Thread t = new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
try {
String command = null;
while (true) {
Socket socket = listener.accept();
System.out.println("Got a connection from: " + socket.getLocalPort());
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
command = in.readLine();
System.out.println("GOT HERE"); //Not being printed out
if (command != null && !"".equals(command)) {
if ("connection".equals(command)) {
Writer writer = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(socket.getOutputStream()));
writer.write("success\n");
writer.flush();
}
}
}
}
}
}
t.start();
}
This is my client side:
public void makeConnection() {
try {
Socket socket = new Socket(IP, PORT);
Writer writer = new PrintWriter(socket.getOutputStream(), true);
writer.write("connection\n");
BufferedReader socketRead = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
String str;
while ((str = socketRead.readLine()) != null) {
if ("success".equals(str)) {
System.out.println("Successfully saved all hosts to: " + listOfHosts.get(i));
socketRead.close();
socket.close();
iStream.close();
writer.close();
}
}
}catch (Exception e) {
System.out.println(e.getMessage());
}
}
On the client side after I create my socket to the connect to the server I write "connection" into the outputStream of the socket and wait for an acknowledgement back from the server saying success. For some reason the connection is not being made to the server. In the server System.out.println("Got a connection from: " + socket.getLocalPort()); this line is not being printed out.
Is there something wrong that I am doing. I can't spot it. And I am not getting an exception thrown when I try to connect to my server.

1) Make sure you use the same port for both the Client and Server. They must communicate over the same port. It seems you may be using different ports currently.
2) Make sure you actually start your server thread. As-is in your code above, you make a new Thread, but never start it. t.start() must be called somewhere.
3) If this is on your local machine, you may be better off using localhost instead of the actual IP address. Firewalls might treat your external IP differently.
4) Terminate your messages with a newline character, such as \n, so that your BufferedReader can use it's readLine() method. For good measure, also follow-up by flushing the writer's buffer, just in case the newline character didn't trigger that. writer.flush();
And lastly, make sure you terminate the JVM before trying to run your code again. Your code has not shutdown mechanism to un-bind the server from the port... so you may get an exception thrown telling you the port and/or address are already in use. If that happens, either change ports, or kill the java process running in the background.
Here is your code, slightly modified to run on my system. It's working as you might expect it to. I tried to change as little as possible just to get it working on my system. One note is, I hard-coded the port number into the server and client - that's not required, it was just convenient for me to test with:
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.OutputStreamWriter;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.io.Writer;
import java.net.ServerSocket;
import java.net.Socket;
public class Test {
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
Test test = new Test();
test.startServer();
test.makeConnection();
}
public void startServer() throws IOException {
final ServerSocket listener = new ServerSocket(60001);
Thread t = new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
try {
String command = null;
while (true) {
Socket socket = listener.accept();
System.out.println("Got a connection from: " + socket.getLocalPort());
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
command = in.readLine();
System.out.println("GOT HERE");
if (command != null && !"".equals(command)) {
if ("connection".equals(command)) {
Writer writer = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(socket.getOutputStream()));
writer.write("success\n");
writer.flush();
}
}
}
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
});
t.start();
}
public void makeConnection() {
System.out.println("Making Connection");;
try {
Socket socket = new Socket("localhost", 60001);
Writer writer = new PrintWriter(socket.getOutputStream(), true);
writer.write("connection\n");
writer.flush();
BufferedReader socketRead = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
String str;
while ((str = socketRead.readLine()) != null) {
if ("success".equals(str)) {
System.out.println("Successfully saved all hosts to: "); //+ listOfHosts.get(i));
socketRead.close();
socket.close();
//iStream.close();
writer.close();
}
}
}catch (Exception e) {
System.out.println(e.getMessage());
}
}
}

I was facing the exact same issue. I overcame it by using an ACK mechanism (Wasn't my idea, it was suggested to me). The idea is that client would make a request to server and keep the socket connection alive (and the ouput stream open) till server responds back an agreed ACK message over the same channel. Once the client receives the ACK message, only then it would close the connection.
Below is the code for Server :-
final ServerSocket listener = new ServerSocket(11111);
Thread t = new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
try {
String command = null;
while (true) {
System.out.println("About to accept");
Socket socket = listener.accept();
System.out.println("Got a connection from: " + socket.getLocalPort());
DataInputStream inputStream = new DataInputStream(socket.getInputStream());
StringBuilder str = new StringBuilder(inputStream.readUTF());
//command = in.readLine();
System.out.println("GOT HERE. Msg received : "+str);
if (str != null && !"".equals(str.toString())) {
command = str.toString();
if ("connection".equals(command)) {
System.out.println("Got connection message");
DataOutputStream outputStream = new DataOutputStream(socket.getOutputStream());
outputStream.writeUTF("connection");
outputStream.close();
}
}
inputStream.close();
System.out.println("Done");
}
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
}
}
});
t.start();
}
Client :-
public void makeConnection() {
try {
System.out.println("In makeConnection");
Socket socket = new Socket("127.0.0.1", 11111);
DataOutputStream outputStream = new DataOutputStream(socket.getOutputStream());
outputStream.writeUTF("connection");
InputStream inputStream = socket.getInputStream();
DataInputStream dataInputStream = new DataInputStream(inputStream);
StringBuilder str;
do {
str = new StringBuilder(dataInputStream.readUTF());
} while (!str.toString().equals("connection"));
System.out.println("Successfully saved all hosts to: ");
outputStream.close();
dataInputStream.close();
socket.close();
outputStream.close();
}catch (Exception e) {
System.out.println(e.getMessage());
}
}
A call to start the proceedings :-
public void start() throws IOException, InterruptedException {
System.out.println("Starting server");
startServer();
Thread.sleep(1000);
System.out.println("Starting connection");
makeConnection();
}

Java erlang socket communication

i'm having trouble with the socket reading and writing through threads. The server's in erlang and the client in Java. The way i'm doing it is this:
PrintWriter printer = new PrintWriter(socket.getOutputStream(), true);
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
TransmitterTwo trans = new TransmitterTwo(socket);
trans.start(); // Gets the message from socket
TransmitterTwo Class:
public class TransmitterTwo extends Thread {
Socket socket;
String message;
TransmitterTwo(Socket socket) {
this.socket = socket;
}
public String getMessageFromSocket() {
return message;
}
public void run() {
try {
String response = null;
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
while ((response = reader.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println("Server response: "+ response);
this.message = response;
}
socket.close();
} catch(IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
The Problem is in the main client class. The idea is to: receive input from the console, send it to the socket, the server handles the logic and sends a response through the socket. Then on this client I check the response and do whatever i need to do. It's a registration flow, i register, i receive "register_ok", then i login...etc etc. The part of the loop where i'm having trouble is this:
while(true) {
String readerInput = reader.readLine(); // Read from console
printer.println(readerInput.trim()); // Sends it to the socket
while(trans.message == null);
socketMessage = trans.message;
Is this the right approach? The problem is that 'socketmessage' prints the previous received message, it's like..1 step behind, obviously this is thread related but I can't figure out the problem....help? Thanks

Your current approach is suboptimal because you're wasting your main thread spinning waiting on that variable to be updated. Because of how memory visibility works in java it may appear to never be updated (even if it actually is), or you may get stale values when you do access that variable. A more robust approach would be to pass messages between the threads using some of the built in collections in java:
public static void main(String[] args) {
// This queue will be the link between the threads where
// they can pass messages to each other
BlockingQueue<String> messages = new LinkedBlockingQueue<>();
PrintWriter printer = new PrintWriter(socket.getOutputStream(), true);
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
TransmitterTwo trans = new TransmitterTwo(socket, queue);
trans.start(); // Gets the message from socket
...
while(true) {
String readerInput = reader.readLine(); // Read from console
printer.println(readerInput.trim()); // Sends it to the socket
// Wait for the other thread to push a message in to the queue.
String recv = messages.take();
}
}
public class TransmitterTwo extends Thread {
final Socket socket;
final BlockingQueue<String> queue;
TransmitterTwo(Socket socket, BlockingQueue<String> queue) {
this.socket = socket;
this.queue = queue;
}
public void run() {
try {
String response = null;
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
while ((response = reader.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println("Server response: " + response);
// Add the response from the server to the queue
queue.add(response);
}
socket.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
This approach will never get stale values, and the take() operation on the main thread will block until there is some response from the server.

(Java) Getting two threads to communicate with each other whilst running?

I'm learning java. I'm trying to make a simple client/server chat system. What I have so far is a program where the server accepts multiple client connections by giving them each a seperate thread.
My problem now, is that I can't figure out how to get an input from one client, and then have it be sent amongst all of the clients, thus essentially have a very very simple chat mechanic. How would I go about accomplishing this? What would be the simpler way?
My code so far is here;
class Client {
public static void main(String argv[]) throws Exception {
String sentMessage; //variable for input
String receivedMessage; //variable for output
String status;
boolean running;
BufferedReader inFromUser = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
Socket clientSocket = new Socket("127.0.0.1", 5622); //name of computer to connect with and port number to use
DataOutputStream outToServer =
new DataOutputStream(clientSocket.getOutputStream());
BufferedReader inFromServer =
new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(clientSocket.getInputStream()));
System.out.println("Client Side\n");
running = true;
while(running)
{
sentMessage = inFromUser.readLine(); //user inputs text to variable 'xInput'
outToServer.writeBytes(sentMessage + '\n'); //the variable is sent to the server
status = inFromServer.readLine();
System.out.println("FROM SERVER: " + status); //display to user
}
clientSocket.close();
}
}
The server code.
class Server {
public static void main(String argv[]) throws Exception {
String clientMessage;
boolean listening = true;
int portNumber = 5622;
try (ServerSocket serverSocket = new ServerSocket(portNumber)) {
while (listening) {
new ServerThread(serverSocket.accept()).start();
}
} catch (IOException e) {
System.err.println("Could not listen on port " + portNumber);
System.exit(-1);
}
}
}
The thread that handles the client connections.
public class ServerThread extends Thread {
private Socket socket = null;
public ServerThread(Socket socket) {
super("ServerThread");
this.socket = socket;
}
public void run () {
int msgCnt = 0;
try (
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(socket.getOutputStream(), true);
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(
socket.getInputStream()));
) {
//something needs to go here
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}

If you are looking for a simple client-server communication samples then please have a look at below posts where I have described it step by step.
Multiple clients access the server concurrently
Java Server with Multiclient communication.