Hey there people,
I'm trying to create a very basic pong game that can be played over the internet or over a network, now I have the game which can be ran on one computer and two players can play it, so I can split it up into a server and a client, the server will ofcourse hold all of the information, bat position, ball position, score blah blah blah, and the client will just receive the data and use it to display the ball bats and what not.
But I have looked around at many tutorials about java networking (most of them are out of date), and I still can't really get my head around it. Many tutorials say to use InputStream and OutputStream, I know an InputStream can read in files and what not, but not sure about OutputStream, now I have seen the socket class in action from tutorials, but I really can't understand that ... well ok so for example
We have a server like so
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
public class ChatServer
{ private Socket socket = null;
private ServerSocket server = null;
private DataInputStream streamIn = null;
public ChatServer(int port)
{ try
{ System.out.println("Binding to port " + port + ", please wait ...");
server = new ServerSocket(port);
System.out.println("Server started: " + server);
System.out.println("Waiting for a client ...");
socket = server.accept();
System.out.println("Client accepted: " + socket);
open();
boolean done = false;
while (!done)
{ try
{ String line = streamIn.readUTF();
System.out.println(line);
done = line.equals(".bye");
}
catch(IOException ioe)
{ done = true;
}
}
close();
}
catch(IOException ioe)
{ System.out.println(ioe);
}
}
public void open() throws IOException
{ streamIn = new DataInputStream(new BufferedInputStream(socket.getInputStream()));
}
public void close() throws IOException
{ if (socket != null) socket.close();
if (streamIn != null) streamIn.close();
}
public static void main(String args[])
{ ChatServer server = null;
if (args.length != 1)
System.out.println("Usage: java ChatServer port");
else
server = new ChatServer(Integer.parseInt(args[0]));
}
}
And here is the client
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
public class ChatClient
{ private Socket socket = null;
private DataInputStream console = null;
private DataOutputStream streamOut = null;
public ChatClient(String serverName, int serverPort)
{ System.out.println("Establishing connection. Please wait ...");
try
{ socket = new Socket(serverName, serverPort);
System.out.println("Connected: " + socket);
start();
}
catch(UnknownHostException uhe)
{ System.out.println("Host unknown: " + uhe.getMessage());
}
catch(IOException ioe)
{ System.out.println("Unexpected exception: " + ioe.getMessage());
}
String line = "";
while (!line.equals(".bye"))
{ try
{ line = console.readLine();
streamOut.writeUTF(line);
streamOut.flush();
}
catch(IOException ioe)
{ System.out.println("Sending error: " + ioe.getMessage());
}
}
}
public void start() throws IOException
{ console = new DataInputStream(System.in);
streamOut = new DataOutputStream(socket.getOutputStream());
}
public void stop()
{ try
{ if (console != null) console.close();
if (streamOut != null) streamOut.close();
if (socket != null) socket.close();
}
catch(IOException ioe)
{ System.out.println("Error closing ...");
}
}
public static void main(String args[])
{ ChatClient client = null;
if (args.length != 2)
System.out.println("Usage: java ChatClient host port");
else
client = new ChatClient(args[0], Integer.parseInt(args[1]));
}
}
now when the server is up it waits for a connection, using this line
socket = server.accept();
first off, is the program stuck in a loop when it does that?
I understand most of this, but not the networking parts, I understand they throw around the OutputStream and InputStream but I'm still not 100% comfortable on my understanding of it :(
If anyone could be so kind to explain this to me in basic terms I would be most grateful.
Canvas