Echo server example

The Echo program consists of two parts:

  1. A client, EchoClient, that connects to the Echo server, sends a message and displays the echo returned by the server.
  2. The server, EchoServer, which simply receives data from its client and echoes it back.
To implement the Echo program with EJOE we will follow these steps:
  1. Implement a basic server handler for handling Echo requests
  2. Create a server application and start the EJOE based Echo server
  3. Implement a EJOE based Echo client

implementing a basic Echo server handler

In this little example we will implement a server handler which will take a string as input parameter. The handler will just return that string - the echo. 

import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
import de.netseeker.ejoe.handler.ServerHandler;

public class EchoHandler implements ServerHandler
{
	public Object handle( Object obj ) throws Exception
	{
		//the cast is just build in to ensure that we've got a String and not another object type
		String msg = (String)obj;
		logger.log( Level.INFO, "Received client message: " + msg);
		return msg;
	}
}

EchoHandler.java

Create an EJOE based Echo server

Now we have to create a new instance of de.netseeker.ejoe.EJServer, tell it to use our EchoHandler from above, and then start it: 

import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
import java.io.IOException;
import de.netseeker.ejoe.EJServer;

public class EchoServer
{
	private static final Logger logger = Logger.getLogger( EchoServer.class.getName() );

	public static void main( String[] args )
	{
		EJServer server = new EJServer( new EchoHandler(), 9999 );
		try
		{
			server.start();
		}
		catch (IOException e)
		{
			logger.log(Level.SEVERE, "Exception while starting server!", e);
		}
	}
}
When starting the server application, EJServer will start supporting 25 concurrent connections, using non-blocking IO, listen on port 9999 and allow persistent client connections. Usually a ECHO server uses Port 7 but we don't want to deal with the problem, that the lowest ports are reserved for privileged system user accounts only.

EchoServer.java

Implementing a EJOE based ECHO client

Our client will have to read input from the user on the standard input stream, and then forwards that text to the Echo server by passing the input to an EJClient instance. The client program reads and displays the data passed back to it from the server: 

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import de.netseeker.ejoe.EJClient;
import de.netseeker.ejoe.adapter.UTF8StringAdapter;

public class EchoClient
{
	public static void main( String[] args )
	{
		//create a new instance of EJClient, tell it to use localhost as EJOE server on port 9999
		//and use the simple UTF8 based string (de)serializer
		EJClient client = new EJClient( "localhost", 9999, new UTF8StringAdapter() );
		//request a persistent connection to the EJOE server
		client.enablePersistentConnection( true );

		try
		{
			BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader( System.in ) );
			String str = "", result = null;
			System.out.print( "> type \"exit\" to quit the client program." );

			while (str != null)
			{
				System.out.print( "> type your message: " );
				//read input from the commandline
				str = in.readLine();

				if( str.equalsIgnoreCase("exit"))
				{
					System.out.println("Bye." );
					client.close();
					System.exit(1);
				}

				//user typed a message
				if( str.length() > 0 )
				{
					//invoke EJClient to handle the request
					result = (String)client.execute( str );
					System.out.println("Server returned: " + result );
				}
			}
		}
		catch (IOException e)
		{
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
	}
}

EchoClient.java

Conclusion

As you can see in the three example sources above, it is an easy task to implement a network client/server solution with EJOE. Well, an Echo server isn't really a hard exercise but it shows the basic usage pattern when creating a network solution based on EJOE.

To understand what EJOE does for you, just recognize what the things are we don't see in the example sources above:

  • sockets, selectors, network input/output streams or any other low-level network related instruction
  • PrintWriters/PrintReader or any other kind of serialization/deserialization of message strings
EJClient (as well as EJServer) hides all the low-level network stuff as well as serialization/deserialization. You pass an object to EJClient, you will get an object back from it. Same thing on serverside, your ServerHandler will get an object and has to return an object. Just as simple as a usual method invocation.