I've created a Java server with sockets, just how do print to ALL sockets?

Question

I've been trying this for a while, and I want multiple clients to recieve multiple inputs simultaneously.
There is one problem, I want the server to print "Hi" to all clients if one client says 'print2all Hi'.
I know how to process it to print it, just to print to ALL clients is the problem.

Here's what I have so far.
Server

try{
    try{
        server = new ServerSocket(25565);
    } catch (Exception e){
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    while (isListening){
        new SocketThread(server.accept()).start();
    }
    server.close();
} catch (Exception e){
    e.printStackTrace();
}

SocketThread

try {
    PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(socket.getOutputStream(), true);
    BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));

    String inputLine, outputLine;
    Processor kkp = new Processor();
    out.println("Hi!");

    while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
        outputLine = kkp.Proccess(inputLine,this.socket);
        out.println(outputLine);
    }
    out.close();
    in.close();
    socket.close();

} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Client

            Processor p = new Processor();
            socket = new Socket("localhost",25565);
            out = new PrintWriter(socket.getOutputStream(), true);
            in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));                
            BufferedReader stdIn = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
            String fromServer;
            String fromUser;
            out.println("print2all Hi")            
            socket.close();

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 23 '12 at 08:08

6

First you need to keep track of all connected clients:

final List<SocketThread> clients = new ArrayList<>();

while (isListening){
    SocketThread client = new SocketThread(server.accept()).start();
    clients.add(client);
}

Having such list if one client receives "print2all Hi" it simply iterates over all clients and sends message to each of them. To do this you'll most likely have to expose some method on SocketThread that will access client socket. This means you'll have to change out variable to field.

Alternative approach is to keep a list of client sockets. But this breaks encapsulation badly. Also you might run into nasty IO/thread-safety issues if sockets are exposed directly. Better hide them behind some API (like SocketThread method) and do the synchronization properly inside.

answered Sep 23 '12 at 08:08

Tomasz Nurkiewicz

334,321
69
703
674

1

I don't think that sockets are thread safe though, so you could end up with concurrent printing from the socket thread owning the socket and the one broadcasting. – Christophe Biocca Sep 23 '12 at 08:11
@ChristopheBiocca: you are right, but OP seems to have much simpler problems. However I'll mention about thread-safety, thanks! – Tomasz Nurkiewicz Sep 23 '12 at 08:12
+1 If you use a collection from the concurrency library, you can have the thread add and finally remove the socket to maintain the list. It is likely that adding and removing the connection's handler is more useful as you can get the state of the connections well. – Peter Lawrey Sep 23 '12 at 08:23

giannis christofakis · Answer 2 · 2017-09-06T11:36:50.860

A full implementation of what you are looking.

Server

package tcpserver;

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.net.ServerSocket;
import java.net.Socket;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.StringTokenizer;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;

public class TCPServer {

    private int serverPort = 25565;
    private ServerSocket serverSocket;
    private List<ConnectionService> connections = new ArrayList<ConnectionService>();

    public TCPServer() {
        try {
            serverSocket = new ServerSocket(serverPort);
            System.out.println("Waiting...");
            while (true) {
                Socket socket = serverSocket.accept();
                System.out.println("Connected: " + socket);
                ConnectionService service = new ConnectionService(socket);
                service.start();
            }

        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        new TCPServer();
    }

    class ConnectionService extends Thread {

        private Socket socket;
        private BufferedReader inputReader;
        private PrintWriter outputWriter;
        //private String username;

        public ConnectionService(Socket socket) {
            this.socket = socket;
            try {
                inputReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
                outputWriter = new PrintWriter(socket.getOutputStream(), true);
            } catch (IOException e) {
                System.out.println(e.getMessage());
            }
        }

        @Override
        public void run() {
            while (true) {
                try {
                    String receivedMessage = inputReader.readLine();
                    System.out.println(receivedMessage);
                    StringTokenizer stoken = new StringTokenizer(receivedMessage);
                    String fargument = stoken.nextToken();
                    if (fargument.equals("print2all")) {
                        this.sendToAnyone(stoken.nextToken());
                    }
                } catch (IOException ex) {
                    Logger.getLogger(TCPServer.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
                } catch (NullPointerException e) {
                    System.out.println(e.getMessage());
                } finally {
                    outputWriter.close();
                }

            }
        }

        protected void sendMessage(String message) {
            outputWriter.println(message);
        }

        private void sendToAnyone(String message) {

            for (ConnectionService connection : connections) {
                connection.sendMessage(message);
            }
        }
    }
}

Client

package tcpclient;

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.net.InetAddress;
import java.net.Socket;

public class tcpClient extends javax.swing.JFrame {

    private Socket socket;
    private BufferedReader inputReader;
    private PrintWriter outputWriter;

    public tcpClient() {
        connectToServer();
    }

    private void connectToServer() {
        try {
            socket = new Socket(InetAddress.getByName("localhost"), 25565);
            inputReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
            outputWriter = new PrintWriter(socket.getOutputStream(), true);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        new Thread() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                receiveData();
            }
        }.start();
    }

    private void receiveData() {
        try {
            while (true) {
                System.out.println(inputReader.readLine());
            }
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public void sendData(String messageToSend) {
        outputWriter.println(messageToSend);
    }

    public void closeSocket() {
        if (socket != null) {
            try {
                socket.close();
            } catch (IOException ex) {
                ex.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        java.awt.EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                tcpClient client = new tcpClient();
                client.sendData("print2all Hi");
                client.closeSocket();
            }
        });
    }
}

I've created a Java server with sockets, just how do print to ALL sockets?

2 Answers2

Linked