I/O stream from Socket not ready

[Richard Scothern]

Hi,
I'm having a little problem with some sockets. I'm creating client and server sockets to talk to each other, however my serversude socket is never receiving data.
// client
socket = new Socket(IP_ADDRESS, PORT_NUMBER);
out = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(socket.getOutputStream()));
in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
out.write("BIDDER:" + name);
out.newLine();
// server
socket = serverSocket.accept();
in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
..
..
try {
if(!in.ready()) {
System.out.println("in not ready " + i);
continue;
}
message = in.readLine();
}
catch(IOException ioe) {
...
}
After the client sends the data to the server, a new thread is created with the code above in. However, in.ready() always returns false. I think this may be because there is no data in the stream, but can't figure out why.
There are no exceptions thrown, so the connections are being made.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Richard

[Michael Morris]

Hi Richard,
You need to flush the stream. Try adding out.flush() after out.newLine() and it should work.
Michael Morris

[Richard Scothern]

Hi,
I already tried this and unfortunately it doesn't work.
Richard

[Michael Morris]

I'm not one to dispute the words of a fellow Java brother but flushing the streams definitely does work. I wrote a test client and server. If the stream is not flushed, the server hangs; when the stream is flushed all proceeds as expected.
Here's the code:
TestServer.java

import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
public class TextServer {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        ServerSocket socket = new ServerSocket(2000);
        Socket client = socket.accept();
        BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(client.getOutputStream()));
        BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(client.getInputStream()));
        out.newLine();
        while (true) {
            if(!in.ready()) {
                System.out.println("in not ready ");
                continue;
            } else {
                String message = in.readLine();
                System.out.println(message);
                out.write("Received from client: " + message);
                out.newLine();
                out.flush();
                break;
            }
        }
    }
}

TestClient.java

import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
public class TextClient {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        String name = "mike";
        Socket socket = new Socket(InetAddress.getLocalHost(), 2000);
        BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(socket.getOutputStream()));
        BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
        out.write("BIDDER:" + name);
        out.newLine();
        out.flush();
        String line = "";
        while (line.equals("")) {
            line = in.readLine().trim();
            System.out.println(line);
        }
    }
}

Michael Morris
[ February 25, 2003: Message edited by: Michael Morris ]

[Richard Scothern]

hmmm, ok.
I do believe you, it just didn't work for me, for some reason.
I got around it by just using an auto-flushing printwriter. But I'll take another look.
Thanks for your help.
Richard