Blocking io server: looping in.read()

Question

Hello,
i need some advice on my blocking io server,
the thing is every registered client has a thread which handles the reading
i have some kind of protocol implementation but my question is, would i rather use something like this:
@Override
public void run()
if(id == -1)
if (in.available() > 1)
id = in.read()
if(id != -1)
if (in.avaiable() > 1)
size = in.read();
if(size != -1)
if(in.avaiable() > size)
in.read(...)
SLEEP(60);
}or would i do
Hello,
i need some advice on my blocking io server,
the thing is every registered client has a thread which handles the reading
i have some kind of protocol implementation but my question is, would i rather use something like this:
@Override
public void run()
if (id == -1)
id = in.read()
if(id != -1)
size = in.read();
if(size != -1)
in.read(...)
SLEEP(60);
}but the last one doesnt seem efficient, because we are not sure how long it would block, an solution to the last one would be to set the socket timout to 60
but i'm not sure if this would be alright or if the first one would be the best no matter what
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

796870 wrote:
so i should just invoke in.read() and not availability check,Yes.
but that makes think like i need some sort of check
to see if it doesn't block for longer then a defined time out..Why? Has this thread got anything better to do than to block on read()?
And if you use socket.setSoTimeout() what are you going to do when it happens?
try {
   int nextbyte = in.read();
   if (nextbyte<0) throw new java.io.EOFException();
   // handle nextbyte
} catch (SocketTimeoutException ste) {
   // what are you going to do here?
}Edited by: tschodt on Sep 30, 2010 10:06 PM