Develop Reference

Java and send file through socket

I write a client-server application which will be sending an .xml file from the client to the server. I have a problem with sending large data. I notice that the server can get at most 1460 bytes. When I send a file with more than 1460 bytes the server gets only first 1460 bytes and nothng more. In effect I get uncompleted file. Here is my code:
client send:
public void sendToServer(File file) throws Exception
{
OutputStream output = sk.getOutputStream();
FileInputStream fileInputStream = new FileInputStream(file);
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024*1024];
int bytesRead = 0;
while((bytesRead = fileInputStream.read(buffer))>0)
{
output.write(buffer,0,bytesRead);
}
fileInputStream.close();
}
server get:
public File getFile(String name) throws Exception
{
File file=null;
InputStream input = sk.getInputStream();
file = new File("C://protokolPliki/" + name);
FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(file);
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024*1024];
int bytesReceived = 0;
while((bytesReceived = input.read(buffer))>0) {
out.write(buffer,0,bytesReceived);
System.out.println(bytesReceived);
break;
}
return file;
}
Do anyone know what is wrong with this code? Thanks for any help.
EDIT:
Nothing help :(. I google about that and I think its may connected with TCP MSS with is equal 1460 bytes.

Make sure you call flush() on the streams.
A passerby asks: isn't close() enough?
You linked to the docs for Writer, and the info. on the close() method states..
Closes the stream, flushing it first. ..
So you are partly right, OTOH, the OP is clearly using an OutputStream and the docs for close() state:
Closes this output stream and releases any system resources associated with this stream. The general contract of close is that it closes the output stream. A closed stream cannot perform output operations and cannot be reopened.
The close method of OutputStream does nothing.
(Emphasis mine.)
So to sum up. No, calling close() on a plain OutputStream will have no effect, and might as well be removed by the compiler.

Although not relate to your question, the API document said FileInputStream.read returns -1 for end of file. You should use >=0 for the while loop.

The MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) for Ethernet is around 1500 bytes. Consider sending the file in chunks (i.e. one line at a time or 1024 bytes at a time).
See if using 1024 instead of 1024 * 1024 for the byte buffer solves your problem.

In the code executed on the server side, there is a break instruction in the while loop. Therefore the code in the loop will only get executed once. Remove the break instruction and the code should work just fine.

InputStream not receiving EOF

I am attempting to send an image from my android device to my computer via a socket. The problem is the input stream on my computer reads in every single byte but the last set of them. I have tried trimming the byte array down and sending it, I've manually written out -1 to the outputstream multiple times but the inputstream never reads -1. It just hangs waiting for data. I've also tried not closing the stream or sockets to see if it was some sort of timing issue, but that didn't work as well.
Client side (Android Phone)
//This has to be an objectoutput stream because I write objects to it first
InputStream is = An image's input stream android
ObjectOutputStream objectOutputStream = new ObjectOutputStream(socket.getOutputStream());
objectOutputStream.writeObject(object);
objectOutputStream.flush();
byte[] b = new byte[socket.getSendBufferSize()];
int read = 0;
while ((read = is.read(b)) != -1) {
objectOutputStream.write(b, 0, read);
objectOutputStream.flush();
b = new byte[socket.getSendBufferSize()];
}
//Tried manually writing -1 and flushing here
objectOutputStream.close();
is.close();
socket.close();
Server Side (Computer) This bit of code takes place after the object input stream reads in the objects sent. It only starts to read when the file starts to send
File loc = Location of where the file is stored on the computer
loc.createNewFile();
FileOutputStream os = new FileOutputStream(loc);
Socket gSocket = The socket
ObjectInputStream gInputStream = Object Input stream created from the sockets input stream already used to read in the previous objects
byte[] b = new byte[gSocket.getReceiveBufferSize()];
int read = 0;
while ((read = gInputStream.read(b)) != -1) {
os.write(b, 0, read);
os.flush();
b = new byte[gSocket.getReceiveBufferSize()];
}
os.close();
This code never reads in -1 even if I write -1 directly and flush the stream. The outcome is java.net.SocketException: Connection reset when the stream or socket from the android device is closed. The picture is almost completely sent but the very last pixels of the picture are gray. I also even tried using the out/input stream directly from the socket instead of using the already created objectinputstream/objectoutputstream and it still doesn't work.

Firstly, I think you misunderstood the meaning of EOF (-1). It doesn't mean the server wrote a -1, it means the server closed the stream.
I think your main problem though is that both the server and the client are reading in a loop, and neither get to the point where they close the stream. They are deadlocked - both are waiting for the other one to close first.
Your client:
Your server:
If you know that you have no more data to write then just close the stream.

Since you're already using ObjectInputStream and ObjectOutputStream, you can use their respective readObject and writeObject methods to read/write entire objects at a time. Maybe you could send/receive the entire byte array as an object?
On your android:
1) byte[] imageBytes = ...; // contains the Image
2) objectOutputStream.writeObject(imageBytes);
On your computer:
1) byte[] imageBytes = (byte[])readObject();
2) get image from imageBytes
Of course, you'll have to use readObject from within a thread since it'll block.

You are writing byte[] arrays as objects, bur reading bytes. You should be reading Objects and casting them to byte[]. EOS will cause an EOFException to be thrown.

JBoss input/output streaming

I'm have a deal with Spring MVC based application deployed under JBoss-4.2.3.GA and want to clarify how servlet input/output streaming works with huge requests/responses body. I'm bother about it because don't want to keep whole request/response in memory until call will be completely finished.
How can I detect exactly input/output stream implementation that JBoss passes to servlet? Or possible I can investigate its behavior in some kind of specification?
Thanks for any useful info about it.

The servlet API does by default not keep the entire request and response body in memory. It's effectively your own processing/parsing code which does that.
As to request bodies, when processing it, you should not hold the entire body in a byte[]. Each byte of a byte[] consumes, yes, one byte of Java's memory. You should try to (re)write your code as such that it never holds the entire body in memory. Process it for example line-by-line or buffer-by-buffer and/or stream it immediately to an OutputStream.
E.g. when the body is character based:
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(request.getInputStream(), "UTF-8"));
PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(someOutputStream, "UTF-8"));
for (String line; (line = reader.readLine()) != null;) {
processIfNecessary(line);
writer.writeln(line);
}
or when the body is byte based:
BufferedInputStream input = new BufferedInputStream(request.getInputStream());
BufferedOutputStream output = new BufferedOutputStream(someOutputStream);
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024]; // 1KB buffer.
for (int length; (length = input.read(buffer)) > 0;) {
processIfNecessary(buffer);
output.write(buffer, 0, length);
}
As to response bodies, it will be kept in the memory until the buffer size. Anything beyond the buffer size will be flushed. The default buffer size is usually 2KB. This is configureable at appserver level and by ServletResponse#setBufferSize(). When you set the buffer size too high, it will gobble memory.

Sending file with custom attributes over a network

I want to create a client-server program that allows the client to send a file to the server along with some information about the file (sender name, description, etc.).
The file could potentially be quite large as it could be either a text, picture, audio or video file, and because of that I do not want to have to read the whole file into a byte array before sending, I would rather read the file in blocks, sending them over the network and then allowing the server to append the blocks to the file at it's end.
However I am faced with the problem of how to best send the file along with a few bits of information about the file itself. I would like at a minimum to send the sender's name and a description both of which will be input to the client program by the user, but this may change in the future so should be flexible.
What is a good way of doing this that would also allow me to "stream" the file being sent rather than reading it in as a whole and then sending?

Sockets are natively streams of bytes so you shouldn't have a problem there. I suggest you have a protocol which looks like this.
This will allow you to send arbitrary properties as long as the total length is less than 64 KB. Followed by the file which can be any 63-bit length and is sent a block at a time. (with a buffer of 8 KB)
The Socket can be used to send more files if you wish.
DataOutputStream dos = new DataOutputStream(socket.getOutputStream());
Properties fileProperties = new Properties();
File file = new File(filename);
// send the properties
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
fileProperties.store(writer, "");
writer.close();
dos.writeUTF(writer.toString());
// send the length of the file
dos.writeLong(file.length());
// send the file.
byte[] bytes = new byte[8*1024];
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(file);
int len;
while((len = fis.read(bytes))>0) {
dos.write(bytes, 0, len);
}
fis.close();
dos.flush();
to read
DataInputStream dis = new DataInputStream(socket.getInputStream());
String propertiesText = dis.readUTF();
Properties properties = new Properties();
properties.load(new StringReader(propertiesText));
long lengthRemaining = dis.readLong();
FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(outFilename);
int len;
while(lengthRemaining > 0
&& (len = dis.read(bytes,0, (int) Math.min(bytes.length, lengthRemaining))) > 0) {
fos.write(bytes, 0, len);
lengthRemaining -= len;
}
fos.close();

You could build up program around a well known protocol as FTP.
And to send the meta information you could just create a special file with a unique name that contains the info. Afterwards transfer both the user file and the meta file with FTP.
Otherwise, again using FTP for the file you could transfer the meta data in the client-server stream of your hand-written program.

I recommend using the http protocol for this. The server can be implemented using a servlet and Apache HttpClient can be used for the client. This article has some good examples. You can send both the file and the parameters in the same request. And that too with very little code!

Using ServletOutputStream to write very large files in a Java servlet without memory issues

I am using IBM Websphere Application Server v6 and Java 1.4 and am trying to write large CSV files to the ServletOutputStream for a user to download. Files are ranging from a 50-750MB at the moment.
The smaller files aren't causing too much of a problem but with the larger files it appears that it is being written into the heap which is then causing an OutOfMemory error and bringing down the entire server.
These files can only be served out to authenticated users over HTTPS which is why I am serving them through a Servlet instead of just sticking them in Apache.
The code I am using is (some fluff removed around this):
resp.setHeader("Content-length", "" + fileLength);
resp.setContentType("application/vnd.ms-excel");
resp.setHeader("Content-Disposition","attachment; filename=\"export.csv\"");
FileInputStream inputStream = null;
try
{
inputStream = new FileInputStream(path);
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
int bytesRead = 0;
do
{
bytesRead = inputStream.read(buffer, offset, buffer.length);
resp.getOutputStream().write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
}
while (bytesRead == buffer.length);
resp.getOutputStream().flush();
}
finally
{
if(inputStream != null)
inputStream.close();
}
The FileInputStream doesn't seem to be causing a problem as if I write to another file or just remove the write completely the memory usage doesn't appear to be a problem.
What I am thinking is that the resp.getOutputStream().write is being stored in memory until the data can be sent through to the client. So the entire file might be read and stored in the resp.getOutputStream() causing my memory issues and crashing!
I have tried Buffering these streams and also tried using Channels from java.nio, none of which seems to make any bit of difference to my memory issues. I have also flushed the OutputStream once per iteration of the loop and after the loop, which didn't help.

The average decent servletcontainer itself flushes the stream by default every ~2KB. You should really not have the need to explicitly call flush() on the OutputStream of the HttpServletResponse at intervals when sequentially streaming data from the one and same source. In for example Tomcat (and Websphere!) this is configureable as bufferSize attribute of the HTTP connector.
The average decent servletcontainer also just streams the data in chunks if the content length is unknown beforehand (as per the Servlet API specification!) and if the client supports HTTP 1.1.
The problem symptoms at least indicate that the servletcontainer is buffering the entire stream in memory before flushing. This can mean that the content length header is not set and/or the servletcontainer does not support chunked encoding and/or the client side does not support chunked encoding (i.e. it is using HTTP 1.0).
To fix the one or other, just set the content length beforehand:
response.setContentLengthLong(new File(path).length());
Or when you're not on Servlet 3.1 yet:
response.setHeader("Content-Length", String.valueOf(new File(path).length()));

Does flush work on the output stream.
Really I wanted to comment that you should use the three-arg form of write as the buffer is not necessarily fully read (particularly at the end of the file(!)). Also a try/finally would be in order unless you want you server to die unexpectedly.

I have used a class that wraps the outputstream to make it reusable in other contexts. It has worked well for me in getting data to the browser faster, but I haven't looked at the memory implications. (please pardon my antiquated m_ variable naming)
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.OutputStream;
public class AutoFlushOutputStream extends OutputStream {
protected long m_count = 0;
protected long m_limit = 4096;
protected OutputStream m_out;
public AutoFlushOutputStream(OutputStream out) {
m_out = out;
}
public AutoFlushOutputStream(OutputStream out, long limit) {
m_out = out;
m_limit = limit;
}
public void write(int b) throws IOException {
if (m_out != null) {
m_out.write(b);
m_count++;
if (m_limit > 0 && m_count >= m_limit) {
m_out.flush();
m_count = 0;
}
}
}
}

I'm also not sure if flush() on ServletOutputStream works in this case, but ServletResponse.flushBuffer() should send the response to the client (at least per 2.3 servlet spec).
ServletResponse.setBufferSize() sounds promising, too.

So, following your scenario, shouldn't you been flush(ing) inside that while loop (on every iteration), instead of outside of it? I would try that, with a bit larger buffer though.

Kevin's class should close the m_out field if it's not null in the close() operator, we don't want to leak things, do we?
As well as the ServletOutputStream.flush() operator, the HttpServletResponse.flushBuffer() operation may also flush the buffers. However, it appears to be an implementation specific detail as to whether or not these operations have any effect, or whether http content length support is interfering. Remember, specifying content-length is an option on HTTP 1.0, so things should just stream out if you flush things. But I don't see that

The while condition does not work, you need to check the -1 before using it. And please use a temporary variable for the output stream, its nicer to read and it safes calling the getOutputStream() repeadably.
OutputStream outStream = resp.getOutputStream();
while(true) {
int bytesRead = inputStream.read(buffer);
if (bytesRead < 0)
break;
outStream.write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
}
inputStream.close();
out.close();

unrelated to your memory problems, the while loop should be:
while(bytesRead > 0);

your code has an infinite loop.
do
{
bytesRead = inputStream.read(buffer, offset, buffer.length);
resp.getOutputStream().write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
}
while (bytesRead == buffer.length);
offset has the same value thoughout the loop, so if initially offset = 0, it will remain so in every iteration which will cause infinite-loop and which will leads to OOM error.

Ibm websphere application server uses asynchronous data transfer for servlets by default. That means that it buffers response. If you have problems with large data and OutOfMemory exceptions, try changing settings on WAS to use synchronous mode.
Setting the WebSphere Application Server WebContainer to synchronous mode
You must also take care of loading chunks and flush them.
Sample for loading from large file.
ServletOutputStream os = response.getOutputStream();
FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(file);
try {
int buffSize = 1024;
byte[] buffer = new byte[buffSize];
int len;
while ((len = fis.read(buffer)) != -1) {
os.write(buffer, 0, len);
os.flush();
response.flushBuffer();
}
} finally {
os.close();
}