Question

I’m starting to write my first Java networking program, and long story short I’m having difficulty making sure that I’m taking the right approach. Our professor has given us a server program to test against this UDP client, but I’m getting some errors I can’t seem to squash. Specifically, I get IO exceptions, either “Connection Refused” or “No route to host” exceptions.

public class Lab2Client {
/**
 * @param args[1] == server name, args[2] == server port, args[3] == myport
 */
public static void main(String[] args) {
    //Serverport is set to 10085, our client is 10086
    try {
        Socket echoSocket = new Socket(args[0],Integer.parseInt(args[2]));
        System.out.println("Server connection Completed\n");
        DataOutputStream output = new DataOutputStream(echoSocket.getOutputStream());
        byte[] toSend = new byte[5];
        toSend[0] = 12; toSend[1] = 34;//Code Number
        toSend[2] = 15;//GroupId
        toSend[3] = 86;toSend[4] = 100;//Port number in Little Endian Order
        output.write(toSend);

        System.out.println("Sent Request. Waiting for reply...\n");

        DataInputStream input = new DataInputStream(echoSocket.getInputStream());

        byte[] toRecieve = new byte[]{0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0}; 
        input.read(toRecieve);
        checkMessage(toRecieve);            
    }
    catch (UnknownHostException e) {
        System.err.println("Servername Incorrect!");
        System.exit(1);
    }
    catch (IOException e){
        System.err.println("IO Exception. Exiting...");
        System.err.println(e);
        System.exit(1);
    }
}

I also have some questions about my implementation regarding receiving messages in Java. I’ll be getting a datagram that contains either:

a) 3 formatting bytes (unimportant to the question) along with an IP and port number

or

b) 3 formatting bytes and a port.

Is using a DataInputStream the correct way to do this? I know using an array with 9 elements is lazy instead of dynamically allocating one that’s either 5 or 9, but right now I’m just trying to get this working. That being said, is there a different approach anyone would suggest for this?

Answer 1

thought I’d leave this up for posterity. The problem is simple, and I’m a fool for not noticing it sooner.

The correct programs I was testing this against used the UDP protocol, and this program is written in TCP. The corrected code is:

public class Lab2Client {
/**
 * @param args[0] == server name, args[1] == server port, args[2] == myport
 */
public static void main(String[] args) {
    //Serverport is 10085, our client is 10086
    try {
        DatagramSocket clientSocket = new DatagramSocket();
        InetAddress IPAddress = InetAddress.getByName(args[0]);
        int portToSend = Integer.parseInt(args[2]);
        System.out.println("Clent Socket Created");
        byte[] toSend = new byte[5];
        toSend[0] = 0x12; toSend[1] = 0x34;//Code Number
        toSend[2] = 15;//GroupId, f in hex
        toSend[3] = 0x27;toSend[4] = 0x66;
        System.out.println("Byte Array Constructed");

        DatagramPacket sendPacket = new DatagramPacket(toSend, toSend.length, IPAddress, Integer.parseInt(args[1]));
        clientSocket.send(sendPacket);          
        System.out.println("Sent Request. Waiting for reply...\n");

        DataInputStream input = new DataInputStream(echoSocket.getInputStream());
        toRecieve can either be an error message, a return of what we sent,
        or a byte stream full of IP info and port numbers.
        the "heavy" byte stream is either 4 for IPv4 of 16 for IPv6, 2 bytes for port,
        and the magic number (2 bytes) for a total of 9-20 bytes*/

        byte[] toRecieve = new byte[9];
        DatagramPacket receivePacket = new DatagramPacket(toRecieve, toRecieve.length);
        clientSocket.receive(receivePacket);            
        checkMessage(toRecieve);            
    } //and so on and so forth...

Thanks to @Serge for the help, though nobody could have answered my question correctly with how I asked it. The byte shifting you suggested was important too.