Question

I am trying to read ASCII text response from a tcp open streaming socket

This is what I have come up with so far. I want to know what is the best way to do this that includes error handling. Should I also be checking the SocketError after the Receive call in the do loop?

IPEndPoint ep = new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Parse('192.168.1.1'), 9000); Socket sock = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork, SocketType.Stream, ProtocolType.Tcp); sock.SendTimeout = 5000; sock.ReceiveTimeout = 5000; if (null != sock) {     try     {         sock.Connect(ep);         if (sock.Connected)         {              // Blocks until send returns.             int bytesSent = sock.Send(buffer);             Console.WriteLine('Sent {0} bytes.', bytesSent);             //get the first 4 bytes, should be the lenngth of the rest of the response.             byte[] response = new byte[4];             int bytesRec = sock.Receive(response);             int totalBytesRec = 0;             if (4 == bytesRec)             {                 int len = BitConverter.ToInt32(response, 0);                 response = new byte[len];                 Console.WriteLine('Trying to get {0} bytes.', len);                 bytesRec = 0;                  do                 {                     bytesRec = sock.Receive(response);                     totalBytesRec += bytesRec;                     forecast += Encoding.ASCII.GetString(response, 0, bytesRec);                 } while (totalBytesRec < len && bytesRec > 0);                  if (totalBytesRec != len)                     throw new Exception('The total bytes recieved from manager did not equal the expected bytes');             }             else                 throw new Exception('Unable to get the response size from the manager');               Console.WriteLine('Received {0} bytes.', totalBytesRec);         }      }     catch (SocketException ex)     {         Console.WriteLine('{0} Error code: {1}.', ex.Message, ex.ErrorCode);     }     catch (Exception ex)     {         Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);     }     finally     {         sock.Shutdown(SocketShutdown.Both);         sock.Close();     } } 

Answer 1

Your best bet is probably TcpClient. There’s a great sample that does exactly what you’re doing right in the .NET Documentation here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.sockets.tcpclient.aspx

Good luck to you!