Java socket not handling the data packets properly

Question

I have created a small webserver application where i am receiving http requests from a siebel client. I am using content-length parameter to read the complete data in a buffer string using the command inputstreamreader.read. It works fine in all the cases, except when its used with a firewall. Some times the firewall splits a message into 2 and my logic fails as it doesn't find as many characters in the first packet as mentioned in the content length.
My question is , how can i take care of these scenarios where a firewall is splitting the messages into multiple packets. why the java socket class is not handling the merging of these packets?
any pointers are welcome.
thanks

Answer 1

Because that's the way TCP/IP works. read() gives you the data it can, and tells you how much was actually read. It's up to the application to reconstruct the application-level object. You could do something like this:    byte[] content = new byte[contentLen];
    int offset = 0;
    int remaining = contentLen;
    int currBytesRead = 0;
    while (remaining > 0 && currBytesRead != -1) {
      int currBytesRead = mySocketInputStream.read(content, offset, remaining);
      remaining -= currBytesRead;
      offset += currBytesRead;
    } (Warning: that's off the top of my head, uncompiled and untested. Use for demonstration purposes only!)
Grant