I have 3 .jsp's. The first one asks the user for their username. Once the form is submitted it is taken to a 2nd jsp where a unique passcode is created for the user. How would I go about taking this passcode and passing it to a 3rd jsp using a socket?
You can use java.net.URL and java.net.URLConnection to fire and handle HTTP requests programmatically. They make use of sockets under the covers and this way you don't need to fiddle with low level details about the HTTP protocol. You can pass parameters as query string in the URL.
String url = "http://localhost:8080/context/3rd.jsp?passcode=" + URLEncoder.encode(passcode, "UTF-8");
InputStream input = new URL(url).openStream();
// ... (read it, it contains the response)
This way the passcode request parameter is available in the 3rd JSP by ${param.passcode} or request.getParameter("passcode") the usual way.
Better is however to just include that 3rd JSP in your 2nd JSP.
request.setAttribute("passcode", passcode);
request.getRequestDispatcher("3rd.jsp").include(request, response);
This way the passcode is available as request attribute in the 3rd JSP by ${passcode} or request.getAttribute("passcode") the usual way.
See also:
Using java.net.URLConnection to fire and handle HTTP requests
Unrelated to the concrete question, this is however a terribly nasty hack and the purpose of this is beyond me. There's somewhere a serious design flaw in your application. Most likely those JSPs are tight coupled with business logic which actually belongs in normal and reuseable Java classes like servlets and/or EJBs and/or JAX-WS/RS which you just import and call in your Java class the usual Java way. JSPs are meant to generate and send HTML, not to act as business services, let alone web services. See also How to avoid Java code in JSP files?
So, you want the username to be submitted from the first JSP to the second, by submitting a form to the second, right?
But, for interaction between the second and third, you want to avoid using the communication mechanisms behind the the JSP files and use your own, right?
Well, how you might implement doing this depends on where you're sending your communication from and to. For instance, are they on the same machine, or on different machines?
Generally speaking, you'll need a client-server type of relationship to be set up here. I imagine that you would want your third JSP to act as the server.
What the third JSP will do is will sit and wait for a client to try to communicate with it. But, before you can do that, you'll first need to bind a port to your application. Ports are allocated by the Operating System and are given to requesting processes.
When trying to implement this in Java, you might want to try something like the following:
int port_number = 1080;
ServerSocket server = new ServerSocket(port_number);
In the above example, the ServerSocket is already bound to the specified port 1080. It doesn't have to be 1080 - 1080 is just an example.
Next, you will want to listen and wait for a request to come in. You can implement this step in the following:
Socket request = null;
while((request = server.accept()) == null)
{}
This will cause the server socket to keep looping until it finally receives a request. When the request comes in, it will create a new Socket object to handle that request. So, you could come back to your loop later on and continue to wait and accept requests, while a child thread handles communication using your newly created request Socket.
But, for your project, I would guess that you don't need to communicate with more than one client at a time, so it's okay if we just simply stop listening once we receive a request, I suppose.
So, now onto the client application. Here, it's a little bit different from what we had with the server. First off, instead of listening in on the port and waiting for are request, the client's socket will actively try to connect to a remote host on their port. So, if there is no server listening in on that port, then the connection will fail.
So, two things will need to be know, those are:
What's the IP Address of the server?
What port is the server listening in on?
There are short-cuts to getting the connection using the Java Socket class, but I assume that you're going to test this out on the same machine, right? If so, then you will need two separate ports for both your client and server. That's because the OS won't allow two separate processes to share the same port. Once a process binds to the port, no other process is allowed to access it until that port releases it back to the OS.
So, to make the two separate JSP's communicate on the same physical machine, you'll need both a local port for your client, and you'll need the server's port number that it's listening in on.
So, let's try the following for the client application:
int local_port = 1079;
int remote_port = 1080;
InetSocketAddress localhost = new InetSocketAddress(local_port);
Socket client = new Socket(); //The client socket is not yet bound to any ports.
client.bind(localhost); //The client socket has just requested the specified port number from the OS and should be bound to it.
String remoteHostsName = "[put something here]";
InetSocketAddress remotehost = new InetSocketAddress(InetAddress.getByName(remoteHostsName), remote_port); //Performs a DSN lookup of the specified remote host and returns an IP address with the allocated port number
client.connect(remotehost); //Connection to the remote server is being made.
That should help you along your way.
A final note should be made here. You can't actually run these two applications using the same JVM. You'll need two separate processes for client and server applications to run.
Related
I'm creating a Java program, based on the client-server model in which I need the server and the client(s) to communicate.
More specifically I need them to "give orders" to each other or request things, and transfer data inside those orders/requests, you can see what I'm trying to achieve looks something like a method, but instead of happening locally, those "methods" are called by one side and executed by the other.
For instance a possible scenario is:
The server is listening for orders
The client tries to authenticate
and sends username and password to the server
The server receives
the authentication request, controls whether the username and
password are correct and reports back to the client
The client is
now authenticated
The server is once again listening for orders
Now, my first idea was to use DataInputStream and DataOutputStream, sending requests under the form of strings, for instance, if I wanted the client to request authentication I would do something like this:
DataOutputStream dos = new DataOutputStream(socket.getOutputStream());
dos.writeUTF("requestAuth");
dos.writeUTF(username);
dos.writeUTF(password);
and the server:
DataInputStream dis = new DataInputStream(socket.getInputStream());
if(dis.readUTF().equals("requestAuth")){
String username = dis.readUTF();
String password = dis.readUTF();
//Check whether they're correct or not bla bla bla
}
This doesn't seem like the best option to me, I think there's better ways to do this but I just don't know how, I already searched for a better solution but found nothing.
Another problem that arised is that I need both the server and the client to be able to send those requests simultaneously and these requests can be sent anytime, asynchronously.
For instance: let's say the client is authenticating, it's sending the username, password, etc... but meanwhile the server wants to check if the client is still connected because a Thread is doing it every second, how can I make sure each information is delivered in the right place without the stream clogging up or threads receiving unwanted data? If the client is waiting to know whether the username and password are correct, I don't want to clog it up with the request of the other thread that's doing something completely different.
Basically: my client/server program can be multithreaded, can sockets too without things getting messy? Can I have thread ServerA communicating with thread ClientA, and thread ServerB communicating with thread ClientB without interferring with each other? Can I have multiple streams from the same socket and work on them separately?
I am implementing the TFTP (trivial FTP) protocol in Java. I have a client and a server, and so far the client can request a file and the server sends him that data.
Here is where I hit my problem - for obvious testing reasons, I run both the client and the server on my machine. However, when sending a file, there have to be two sockets listening on the same port:
the client needs to listen for received data packages
the server needs to listen for the client's acknowledgements
...and also two respective sockets for sending data and acknowledgements, also sharing a port.
This normally does happen on the same port, but on different machines. Is there a way to get around this, and make both client and server work peacefully on the same host, without any ugly hacks? And by ugly hacks I mean something like:
predefined offset for the ACK communication port (such as +15 over the data port; this is what I'm currently using now. It sort of works but it feels wrong and is error-prone)
repeatedly closing and opening sockets (send data, close socket used to send data so that the client can use that port to send his ACK, etc.); this also works at the moment, but also via a hack. Here is, for example, how I "reopen" a socket used for sending things:
public void open() {
try {
socket = new DatagramSocket(localPortCache);
} catch (SocketException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
This is evil. My sockets, originally, receive dynamically-allocated ephemeral port numbers. I then memorize that value and use it to "restore" my socket to the old port. However, it can't be guaranteed that that port is still available. It usually is, but there's no guarantee. Am I being overly-paranoid in this case?
generating a new ACK-communication port in the handshake and send it to the client via the control port (69) in an additional step
Update:
I have managed to fix my problem. My issue was that I wasn't trying to reuse my sockets. For instance, I sent something from a socket on port X, but then tried to allocate a new socket on that port to listen for the ACK, instead of just reusing the old socket.
The client doesn't need to use a fixed port number. Just bind it to zero. The server should send the response back to the originating client whatever its port number.
I would like to have this setup:
Server hosting TCP socket server
Multiple clients connected over TCP (keeping connection open)
Then I would like to initiate a message from the Server to the client. I can't figure out how to do this, and have multiple client sessions at the same time. Techniques I've read involve the Server listening on a port, and when it receives communicate from a client, it launches a new thread to handle and process that, and then it goes back to listening on the port for the next request of another client.
So, then how would I tap into that and send a message to a client running on one of those threads?
My actual usage scenario if you are interested is below. Final goal is like a remote control for your file system to upload files to the server.
- Each client has a java background application running in the system tray that connects to the server
- Server hosts connections, and also hosts a RESTFul webservice to initiate communication
- Mobile device connects to Server over RESTFul webservices to request informatino about the client's filesystem. So it can drill down and find a file, then click and have the file uploaded to the server.
The idea here is mobile users needing to upload files from their desktop to the server while away from their office on a mobile device. (and this is for custom product, so can't use a third-party app_
PS: I've been looking at the simple Client-Server chat program here: http://way2java.com/networking/chat-program-two-way-communication/
You want to have a server listening at all times on a specified port. Once the server notices an incoming connection on that port you should create a new Thread to handle the communication between that client and the server, while the main thread keeps on listening for other incoming connections. This way you can have multiple clients connected to one server. Like so:
private void listen() throws IOException {
serverSocket = new ServerSocket(port)
while (GlobalFlags.listening) {
new ServerThread(serverSocket.accept();
if (GlobalFlags.exit) {
serverSocket.close();
break;
}
}
}
Where the GlobalFlags are variables to control the listening process and are not really necessary. You could do a while True and just keep listening for ever and ever.
In my project I have a main server controller which had listeners running in Threads. The controller controlled the GlobalFlags. I'm sure instead of using global flags there is a better way to do inter thread communication but for me this was the simplest at the time.
The ServerThread should be looping all the time switching between sending output to the client and receiving input from the client. Like so:
ServerThread(Socket socket) {
super("GameServerThread");
this.socket = socket;
try {
this.socket.setTcpNoDelay(true);
} catch (SocketException e) {
// Error handling
}
this.terminate = false;
}
#Override
public void run() {
try {
out = new PrintWriter(socket.getOutputStream(), true);
in = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(
socket.getInputStream()));
String inputLine, outputLine;
while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
outputLine = processInput(inputLine);
out.println(outputLine);
if (terminate) {
break;
}
}
}
out.close();
in.close();
socket.close();
} catch (Exception e) {
// Error handling, should not use Exception but handle all exceptions by themselves.
}
On the client side you have a thread running through a similar loop, receiving input from the server and then sending output to the server.
In this example processInput is the function used to process the client's input. If you want the server to initiate contact you can make the server send something to the outputstream before listening for input and make the client listen first.
I have extracted this example from one of my own projects and the this.socket.setTcpNoDelay(true) is supposed to make the process faster. Reference here: http://www.rgagnon.com/javadetails/java-0294.html
"java.net.Socket.setTcpNoDelay() is used to enable/disable TCP_NODELAY which disable/enable Nagle's algorithm.
Nagle's algorithm try to conserve bandwidth by minimizing the number of segments that are sent. When applications wish to decrease network latency and increase performance, they can disable Nagle's algorithm (that is enable TCP_NODELAY). Data will be sent earlier, at the cost of an increase in bandwidth consumption. The Nagle's algorithm is described in RFC 896.
You get the current "TCP_NODELAY" setting with java.net.Socket.getTcpNoDelay()"
So to send a message to a specific client you could put all the threads upon creation in an ArrayList so you can keep track of all the currently connected clients. You can have the processInput method halt and polling a queue/variable until another class puts the message to be send in the queue/variable. So how to gain a handle on the class depends on your implementation of processInput. You could give every thread an ID (which is what I did in my project) and maybe have the processInput method poll an ArrayList at index=ID. Then to send output to the client you would have to set the variable at index=ID.
This method seems kind of clunky to me personally but I'm not really sure how else I would do it. You would probably use Queues and have processInput write the input to its Queue and then wait for another class to read it and put its response in the Queue. But I have personally never worked with Queues in java so you should read up on that yourself.
In my knowledge
1) Server hosting TCP socket server -- Possible
2) Multiple clients connected over TCP -- Possible
3) Then I would like to initiate a message from the Server to the client -- Not Possible. The Client has to initiate a connection creation, then the server might be able to send data packets to You. Example: You need to open Facebook website on your browser, Facebook server cannot decide to send its page to your PC on its own because your PC will not have a static IP address, and also if Facebook hypothetically writes code to initiate connection to Your PC, then it is as good as Your PC is the server and Facebook website/server acts as client.
I'm not sure if what I'm trying to do is possible, it might not. Here is my problem:
I'm trying to use a Servlet to pass information from a client to a server via HTTP. This communication is very frequent (I'm passing UI information, so every single mouse event), so I want to have as little overhead as possible to avoid latency issues, which is why I would like to not do a GET call for each transmission. HTTP is a requirement. I'm using an older Tomcat version (Servlet API 2.4). I guess this is somewhat of a web sockets use case, but I don't have any web sockets support available.
What I tried was to open a URL connection on the client side, and to open the input stream (otherwise the doGet() of the servlet never gets called). I'm passing an argument for initialization purposes to the client.
URLConnection uiConnection = url.openConnection();
uiConnection.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Basic " + encode("xyz" + ":"
+ "xyz"));
uiConnection.setReadTimeout(0);
uiConnection.setDoOutput(true);
uiConnection.setAllowUserInteraction(true);
DataInputStream is = new DataInputStream(
uiConnection.getInputStream());
When I later try to retrieve an ouput stream from this connection, I'm getting a ProtocolException (cannot write output after reading input).
out = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(
uiConnection.getOutputStream()));
out.write(uiUpdate);
On the servlet end I did something like this:
DataInputStream is = new DataInputStream(
request.getInputStream());
Am I completely on the wrong track or is something like this possible without using a new connection for each transmission?
Thanks,
Mark
I think the key question for this, is do you also have http traffic going to this IP? If so, there may not be anything you can do using just java. If not, then create a servlet to listen in on port 80, and parse the incoming data directly.
http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/networking/sockets/clientServer.html
For those who do not want to read a long question here is a short version:
A server has an opened socket for a client. The server gets a request to open a socket from
the same client-IP and client-port. I want to fore the server not to refuse such a request but to close the old socket and open a new one. How can I do ti?
And here is a long (original) question:
I have the following situation. There is an established connection between a server and client. Then an external software (Bonjour) says to my client the it does not see the server in the local network. Well, client does nothing about that because of the following reasons:
If Bonjour does not see the server it does not necessarily means that client cannot see the server.
Even if the client trusts the Bonjour and close the socket it does not improve the situation ("to have no open socket" is worser that "to have a potentially bad socket").
So, client do nothing if server becomes invisible to Bonjour. But than the server re-appears in the Bonjour and Bonjour notify the client about that. In this situation the following situations are possible:
The server reappears on a new IP address. So, the client needs to open a new socket to be able to communicate with the server.
The server reappears on the old IP address. In this case we have two subcases:
2.1. The server was restarted (switched off and then switched on). So, it does not remember the old socket (which is still used by the client). So, client needs to close the old socket and open a new one (on the same server-IP address and the same server-port).
2.2. We had a temporal network problem and the server was running the whole time. So, the old socket is still available for the use. In this case the client does not really need to close the old socket and reopen a new one.
But to simplify my life I decide to close and reopen the socket on the client side in any case (in spite on the fact that it is not really needed in the last described situation).
But I can have problems with that solution. If I close the socket on the client side and than try to reopen a socket from the same client-IP and client-port, server will not accept the call for a new socket. The server will think that such a socket already exists.
Can I write the server in such a way, that it does not refuse such calls. For example, if it (the server) sees that a client send a request for a socket from the same client-IP and client-port, it (server) close the available socket, associated with this client-IP and client-port and than it reopens a new socket.
You can't "reopen" a socket on your server. If the socket already exists and the client is trying to reconnect then you should get an BindException (see your previous question). The scenario that may be possible:
Client Shuts down socket
Server OS "notices" socket is dead on client side and shuts its side down
Client reconnects on the same port, but with a "new" socket
In this case you may consider it be the "same" socket, but it really isn't. That said a strategy you may wish to adopt is to have some sort of map (hash of client IP/port) to whatever mechanism you are using to service the socket or some kind of persistent state data, so that it can simulate a continuation of a previous socket (in the same vein as http sessioning). Something along the lines of:
HashMap<Client, State> sessions = ...;
public void server(){
...
while(true){
Socket socket = server.accept();
Client client = new Client(socket);
State s = sessions.get(client);
if(s == null){
s = new State();
sessions.put(client, s);
}
client.setState(s);
service(client);
}
...
}
and you can adjust the map lookup to define what a "session" means within your application (same client IP, same client IP & client port, some sessionid sent over the wire, etc).
If you are just trying to make it possible for the client to reconnect and force the server to "notice" the client is disconnected, the only real way in Java is to try and read/write data, and if it has been shutdown then it should throw an exception. Therefore as was mentioned in your other question you could add some kind of ack/nak feature to your protocol and add some type of check if you believe the client is disconnected (for example if you haven't read any data in the last N milliseconds, send a message the client must echo within M milliseconds, otherwise it is assumed to be disconnected). You can also try isConnected, isInputShutdown, isOutputShutdown, but I have found those to be unreliable in my own code to indicate the socket state, unless you have closed the socket (i.e. the one you are testing on the server).
The situation you describe is impossible. You can't get a new connect request from the same remote IP:port as an existing connection. The client will not permit it to occur.
Based on the comments:
You cannot write the server in a way that it will close a socket it still thinks is connected and automatically accept the new connection, as application code does not have that kind of control over the TCP stack, nor is there a way to reopen a connection.
The chance of the port numbers being the same between your client restarts is very small.
But still, if that happens, the server will note that that you're trying to set up an already connected socket, and refuse your new connection. There's not much else your client can do in this case besides close your socket, create a new one and try to connect again - and another random port will be selected.
additional note, your server should take some form of action to detect and close dead sockets, if all your server does is read incoming data, the "dead" sockets will never be
closed as they will never be detected as dead.(enabling tcp keepalive is one cheap measure to take against dead sockets staying up for months, though it will take a couple of hours to detect them as such by default.)