Socket not used and just hangs program?

Question

Hi, I'm writing a server class and in it, I try to open a socketserver and a socket. However, I found that when the socket tries to open up, the program will just hang there. I think part of the problem is because eclipse is saying that my socket object is never used. Despite having this line: "socket = serverSocket.accept();" being executed. Can someone shed some light into what is causing this to not be used/hang?
package Server;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.*;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JTextArea;
public class Server extends JFrame {
     private JTextArea console;
     private static ServerSocket serverSocket;
     private static Socket socket;
     public Server() {
          super("Server");
          this.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
          console = new JTextArea();
          //opens the serverSocket
          try {
               serverSocket = new ServerSocket(5000);
               System.out.println("serverSocket opened");
          } catch (IOException e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
          //opens the socket
          try {
               socket = serverSocket.accept();
               System.out.println("socket opened and didn't hang");
          } catch (IOException e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
          console.setText("Awaiting connection...");
          //finalize
          this.add(console);
          this.setSize(400, 300);
          this.setVisible(true);
     private static void closeAll()
          //closes the socket
//          try {
//               socket.close();
//               System.out.println("socket closed");
//          } catch (IOException e) {
//               e.printStackTrace();
          //closes the serverSocket
          try {
               serverSocket.close();
               System.out.println("serverSocket closed");
          } catch (IOException e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
     public static void main( String args[]) {
          Server serverWindow = new Server();
          closeAll();
          System.out.println("end");
}

Answer 1

Hi, I'm writing a server class and in it, I try to open a socketserver and a socket.Why the socket?
However, I found that when the socket tries to open up, the program will just hang there.And it will do that until someone connects to your server.
I think part of the problem is because eclipse is saying that my socket object is never used.Is it really? I find that rather hard to believe.
The problem is that your socket is never used, by a client. So accept() blocks forever. What exactly did you expect?
The norm is to accept sockets in a loop in a separate thread. And process each accepted socket in another thread, per accepted socket. And to never do blocking I/O in the AWT event-dispatching thread. And not to have servers with GUIs as a matter of fact. And certainly never to have a single static socket variable BTW: this is evidence of very unclear thinking> Even the server socket should be an instance variable.