Question

I have to make an university project that involves a client/server architecture.

There should be a server where a client can login and search or save some stuff.

What’s the best way to implement a stuff like that?

I think it can be done using RMI or ServerSockets or even WebServices, but what’s the easiest way to implement this project?

Using Web Sevrvices i think it can be troublesome the authentication/session handling, using ServerSockets i have done some tests where i pass some custom serialized objects, but It doesnt seem to me a good way to go.

Any help is appreciated

Answer 1

Since this is a project for university I will not post an solution, but give you an good direction.

The most basic Way (what may be a good thing for a university project, and for understanding th whole matter…) would be with the Server listening in his Mainthread on a ServerSocket for Requests to connect to the Server and then for every (correct) Request (you need to specify somehow what is correct in this case) starting a new Thread with a Socket connected to the Client. This Threads should be hosted in some sort of List or whatever in the Mainthread of the Server…

Update:

So if this Server provides different functionalities to its clients, which are of course methods in our Server Code, you can specify the Objects which are crated when a new Client connects (I’m calling these “ClientServerConnection” from now on, and which run in its own Thread) in the Way that the Server Object is passed to it, so if one of the “ClientServerConnection”s get a Request for whatever they can call the matching method on the Server-Object and give an according response to the client…

Here some pseudo-code:

in Server:

//request for Connection came in 
ClientServerConnection csc = new ClientServerConnection(this, "and everything you need, at least client IP for connecting the socket");
csc.run(); //running in its own thread, of cause ClientServerConnection should extend Thread
connectionList.add(csc); //a list of the connections the Server holds

in ClientServerConnection:

//A request to the use a functionality of the Server come in, in the easiest way you are sending a String, and than trying to match it here
if(recievedString=="doWhatever"){
Server server.doWhatever(); //calling the according method on the Server Object you passed by creation of the ClientServerConnection Object
//now return something to the client, according to whatever the Method did 
}else if(recievedString=="doSomethingElse"){
//same again, according to whatever the now requested method does
}else{
//the client requested something you do not provide, need some sort of handling here
}

Hope I got you right and this helps…