Sockets and URLs

1-Mar-13

Sockets

A socket is a low-level software device for connecting two computers together

Sockets can also be used to connect two programs running on the same computer A Socket is a client socket, and initiates the communication A ServerSocket waits for a request; it then

There are two kinds of sockets:

May perform the requested action May return a result to the requester

Socket constructors

Socket(InetAddress address, int port)

Creates a stream socket and connects it to the specified port number at the specified IP address Creates a server socket on the specified port, with a default queue length of 50

ServerSocket(int port)

The actual work, for both kinds of sockets, is done by an instance of the SocketImpl class

Some Socket methods

getInputStream()

Returns an input stream for this socket Returns an output stream for this socket Closes this socket

getOutputStream()

close()

Some ServerSocket methods

accept()

Listens for a connection to be made to this socket and accepts it Returns a Socket as its result

For input, use the getInputStream() and getOutputStream() methods on the returned Socket

close()

Closes this socket

Socket fields

protected InetAddress address

The IP address of the remote end of this socket The file descriptor object for this socket The local port number to which this socket is connected

protected FileDescriptor fd

protected int localport

protected int port

The port number on the remote host to which this socket is connected

URLs

A URL is a Uniform Resource Locator, typically a Web address Some constructors:

URL(String spec)

Creates a URL object from the information in the String Creates a URL object from the specified protocol, host, port number, and file The host may be localhost, to indicate this machine Same as above, but uses the default port for this protocol

URL(String protocol, String host, int port, String file)

URL(String protocol, String host, String file)

Some URL methods

openStream()

Opens a connection to this URL and returns an InputStream for reading from that connection Returns a URLConnection object that represents a connection to the remote object referred to by the URL

openConnection()

getProtocol(), getHost(), getPort(), getFile(), getQuery()

Using a URLConnection

The steps in using a URLConnection are:

Use openConnection() to create the URLConnection object Set the parameters as desired:

setAllowUserInteraction, setDoInput, setDoOutput, setIfModifiedSince, setUseCaches, setRequestProperty

Use the connect method to make the actual connection Use the remote object

Some URLConnection methods

getHeaderField(int n)

Returns the value for the nth header field Returns the value of the named header field Returns the key for the nth header field Returns an input stream that reads from this open connection Returns an output stream that writes to this connection
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getHeaderField(String name)

getHeaderFieldKey(int n)

getInputStream()

getOutputStream()

The End

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