Urgent help on reading data into ByteBuffer

Question

Hi,
I am trying to read data into ByteBuffer using SocketChannel.
The following code working fine but the problem is with ByteBuffer size.
The data varies from request to request .
How do I read data into ByteBuffer with out specifing size .
The problem with size is some records has more than 500 bytes and some are less than 500 bytes.
I want to read all the data .. ( even if it has more than 500 bytes ..)
How do i solve this problem ..
Is there any way to read data dynamically from socket channel ...
Any help on this please ...
The data I have to read is in the following format ..
XXX ... yyyyy
AAA
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDd
etc ...
Here is my Code:
public ByteBuffer getResponse(byte[] request) throws Exception {
int lenth = 500;
InetSocketAddress isa = new InetSocketAddress("ip", port);
SocketChannel channel = SocketChannel.open(isa);
ByteBuffer requestBuffer = ByteBuffer.wrap(request);
channel.write(requestBuffer);
ByteBuffer responseByteBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(length);
int num = 0;
while (num == 0 ) {
responseByteBuffer.rewind();
num = channel.read(responseByteBuffer);
channel.close();
return responseByteBuffer;
Thanks.

Answer 1

Two possible solutions
1. Read in as many bytes as you can until you hit the EOS OR you fill the byte buffer. If you fill the buffer (try checking for BufferUnderFlowException), you could move the read bytes into a dynamically allocated memory Collection such as an ArrayList. When you hit the EOF, you could then do whatever else you need to do from then on.
2. I use this option: Implement a site local protocol for transmitting data. Provide a header first containing 2 ints (compressed size, uncompressed size - so you can also use compression when sending), and send the remainder as a payload.
Therefore
Read in the header first (always 8 bytes)
Then extract those integer values. They will tell you how much is being sent. Set you byte buffer for the payload to be the correct size for this transmission.
Reset and wait for next connection