2

I'm currently working on trying to create a very basic bare bones instant messenger with Java.

I'm at a bit of a loss where to begin, was wondering if anyone here could reccommend a starting point? What I should read? What would be the easiest way for a beginner/intermediate programmer to try and achieve this?

Currently, I'll I'd want it to be able to do is to send text to one machine to another. I am so far unfamiliar with anything network related in java. Would I use a server or just direct connect between two machines?

Any pointers/direction or advice anyone has in this matter would be very helpful!

Jivings
  • 22,834
  • 6
  • 60
  • 101
Eogcloud
  • 1,335
  • 4
  • 19
  • 44

3 Answers3

3

Firstly check out the official resource for Socket programming, the article on writing a Client/Server Pair should provide you with what you need to know to create a instant messenger.

Jivings
  • 22,834
  • 6
  • 60
  • 101
2

Well, I am focusing the second question of yours.

If you're building this program for your local area network and if you're intended to use socket programming, you need to find the exact ip address of the machine. If you don't know the ip address ( I mean if you don't want the program to know ip address before you run it ) ,then you can ping local ip addresses until you find some peers.

Some of the p2p applications use servers as the ip matchers. This means that the servers have ip address tables which make all of the users send/receive data by using these servers. But if you just started on networking with this project, I think don't use server.

Lastly, you can take a look at a project of my own. It's a simple parallel document preparation program with a chat module inside it. It's developed in C#. It needs wireless ad hoc network to run. Link : http://code.google.com/p/parallel-docs/

aacanakin
  • 2,844
  • 4
  • 25
  • 42
  • 1
    Polling local IP addresses doesn't sound like a great idea. Also, it's pretty likely that an IM program *will* need a server in order to connect the two machines. – Jivings Jan 16 '12 at 03:09
  • 1
    I also think that polling isn't the best idea but it's a way to solve the problem. But, for a starter project, I think it could be used. The first thing to do is write 2 java programs like receiver.java and sender.java and test it whether the messages are received and sent correctly. After that it can be developed further and used a client-server or p2p pattern – aacanakin Jan 16 '12 at 03:22
  • This is the kind of starting point I was looking for! I want to do it, but it seems overwhelming at first, didn't know where to begin, I can try what you've mentioned here and see how I get on. Thank you for the reply, I really appreciate it! – Eogcloud Jan 16 '12 at 03:33
0

I don't think this type of project is ever going to be a beginner project. I'm absolutely not discouraging you to try it, I think you should. I'm always in over my head with stuff like this but I look it up and ask questions and usually end up learning something. My advice would be no matter how simple of a program it is, start with some Class Diagrams, if nothing else just to get organized before jumping into the code. For example you know you you'll need a user account object right off the bat and you know you'll need certain attributes for that object (username, password, etc.), I encapsulate everything so then you would need methods to get and set these fields and so on. I've found that by doing that even if I don't create complete proper UML diagrams getting the easy stuff out of the way and if somewhat organized first if nothing else frees me to focus on the more complex logic and things I may not yet know how to implement.

Kevin Bigler
  • 256
  • 1
  • 2
  • 9
  • I finished this six months ago, it was about 80% complete and worked pretty well, I learnt more doing it than I have with anything else in Java! – Eogcloud Jan 03 '13 at 05:02
  • 1
    Nice, I was inspired by your project completed one as well. Completed is loosely defined... Two client programs can communicate through a server program, I don't have a server to put it on so there's really no point in continuing at the moment so I've moved on to a metronome project. It seemed pretty straightforward but between the Sound API and precise thread timing I'm really running in to some major road blocks, let me know if you're able to work that one out haha :-). – Kevin Bigler Jan 03 '13 at 05:20