Please help (Simple chat programme)

Question

I made a simple chat programme.
It has a server object and it can handle several client.
It is working properly and can use to chat.
I have some problems. can you please help me.
1.What is the best method to read input and outputStreams
I have used inputStream.readUTF()/outputStream.writeUTF() methods and
also I have used bufferedReader.readLine()/Printwriter.println() methods.
I don't know about other methods.So please tell me what is the best and new out of these two.
And are there any method which is better than these two.
2.Is there any way to get more details from input and output streams
Here more details means Fontcolor,Size etc;
by now I'm adding them in to my output streams and filtering them when rea input stream.
I'm getting other details(Fontcolor,Size) and add them all to a string.
that means if client type "hi" my string will be something like this
"12ff0000hi".
When read the input stream i make a char[] and take first 2 chars to integer next six to a string and rest
to another string.
I think now you can understand my concept. So I'll not tell every thing.(if you want i can fully describe it)
I' feeling this is very bad way to do that kind of work.
Am i correct?
so can you give me some hints or examples to do such kind of things.

Answer 1

Here's a simple DataInputStream program that talks to itself. It runs the server as a seperate thread.
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
public class DataXfer
        private int port = 5050;
        private String address="127.0.0.1";
        public static void main(String args[])
                new DataXfer().startup();
        // run the server code as a thread and then run the client code
        private void startup()
                new Thread(new Runnable(){public void run(){listen();}}).start(); // start server thread
                synchronized(this){
                        try{wait();}catch(InterruptedException ie){}    // wait until its ready
                connect();                                      // do client stuff     
        private void listen()
                ServerSocket ss = null;
                Socket us = null;
                boolean running = true;
                try{
                        System.out.println("Listening on port "+port);
                        synchronized(this){notify();}               // tell client we're ready
                        ss = new ServerSocket(port);    // listen for incoming connection
                        us = ss.accept();
                        ss.close();
                        ss = null;
                        DataInputStream dis = new DataInputStream(us.getInputStream());
                        try{
                                while(running){
                                        int len = dis.readShort();      // read the count
                                        byte [] ba = new byte[len];
                                        int rlen = dis.read(ba,0,len);  // read the data
                                        System.out.println("len="+len+" read length="+rlen);
                                        if(rlen < len){
                                                us.close();
                                                running = false;
                                        else{
                                                for(int j = 0; j<rlen; j++)System.out.print(ba[j]+" ");
                                                System.out.println("");
                        catch(EOFException ee){System.out.println("EOF");}
                catch(IOException ie){
                        ie.printStackTrace();
                        System.exit(0);
                finally{
                        if(ss != null)try{ss.close();}catch(IOException se){}
                        if(us != null)try{us.close();}catch(IOException ue){}
        private void connect()
                Socket us=null;
                byte [] ba = new byte[31];
                for(byte i = 0; i<ba.length; i++)ba=i;
try{
System.out.println("Connecting to "+address+":"+port);
us = new Socket(address, port); // make connection
System.out.println("Connected");
DataOutputStream dos = new DataOutputStream(us.getOutputStream());
for(int j = 0; j<ba.length;j+=10){
dos.writeShort(j); // write the count
dos.write(ba,0,j); // write the data
System.out.println("sent "+j+" bytes");
try{Thread.sleep(1000);}catch(InterruptedException ie){}
catch(IOException ie){ie.printStackTrace();}
finally{
if(us != null)try{us.close();}catch(IOException ue){}
For an example of a chat program using NIO see my NIO Server Example. That example is neither short nor simple.