Question

I have a C# application (which is the client) and I have a server. Now the server gets and sends all sorts of messages which are strings to the client, I am using StreamWriter for this, now the sending message on the client and the server looks pretty the same, I take the string encode it to UTF-8 and then send it

public void SendMessage(String p)
{
    if (p != "")
    {
        string StringMessage = HttpUtility.UrlEncode(p, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8);

        try
        {
            swSender.WriteLine(StringMessage);
            swSender.Flush();
        }
        catch (IOException e)
        {
            //do some stuff
        }
    }
}

now,the strings I send is something like this:

"SUBJECT@@@@SOMEDATA1<><>SOMEDATA2<><>SOMEDATA3

This causes some problems, and makes me think. Is this the way big applications send/ receive data? Because it looks pretty silly. If no, then can some one provide an example on how big applications send messages?

Also: my way of sending messages makes me make big nested if

For example:

if(Subject="something")
    do something
else if(subject="something else")
    do something else

How can I fix this?

Answer 1

It all greatly depends on your application’s needs.
Generally speaking: no, inventing your own protocol is not a good idea.

There are quite a few ways to send messages from client to server.
I’d suggest you to do some reading on WCF, or if you are in .NET 2.0 than .NET Remoting.
Also, you might want to consider to send HTTP messages, as there are a shitload of frameworks to do that.