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How to disconnect any clients still connected and close the server?

I have to implement (in the server side) the quit command which disconnects any clients still connected and closes the server.
Here the server code.
public class Server {
public static void main (String args []) {
if (args.length < 1) {
System.err.println("Usage: java Server <port>");
return;
}
int port = Integer.parseInt(args[0]);
try {
ServerSocket listener = new ServerSocket(port);
Files input = new Files();
while (true) {
System.out.println("Listening...");
Socket s = listener.accept();
System.out.println("Connected");
Thread clientHandlerThread = new Thread(new ClientHandler(s,input));
clientHandlerThread.start();
}
} catch (IOException e) {
System.err.println("Error during I/O operation:");
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
how can the server accept command line instructions while it is running?

First of all, you have to keep track of all the clients that you create by putting their instances in a list so that when you're going to shutdown everything, you could access them and tell them to finish their job.
And about how to tell the thread instances to do that, you should call their interrup() method to inform them that they should finish/stop whatever it's doing. Calling the interrupt() method on a thread leads an InterruptedException in the thread that you should handle and gracefully finish whatever you're doing.
For example if you have something like this in the run method of your ClientHandler:
while (true) {
try {
Thread.sleep(interval);
} catch (InterruptedException e){
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
System.out.println(
"We've been asked to finish up the communication. Bye! ;)");
}
// do your business
}
This was of course a very simplified scenario to demonstrate the overall approach. You should be able to find tons of tutorials online about how to use the interrupt.

Java Sockets listener

Would it be appropriate to use a thread to get objects received by a socket's InputStream and then add them to a ConcurrentLinkedQueue so that they can be accessed from the main thread without blocking at the poll-input loop?
private Queue<Packet> packetQueue = new ConcurrentLinkedQueue<Packet>();
private ObjectInputStream fromServer; //this is the input stream of the server
public void startListening()
{
Thread listeningThread = new Thread()
{
public void run()
{
while(isConnected()) //check if the socket is connected to anything
{
try {
packetQueue.offer((Packet) fromServer.readObject()); //add packet to queue
} catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
};
listeningThread.start(); //start the thread
}
public Packet getNextPacket()
{
return packetQueue.poll(); //get the next packet in the queue
}

It depends on what you need to do with this object that you'll use in main thread.
If need sometime to process it or if it'll be used many times than you can put it in a queue or in another class that will hold this object for you, but if the time you need to process it is low you and you don't need this object further after processing you don't really need to use a queue.
About using the ConcurrentQueue depends too, you need order? you need guarantee synchronism between the read and the write?
You can use Asynchronous socket too to handle many clients and process in the same thread or even getting the objects from them and throwing in a queue to further process.
But "be appropriate" is hard to answer because depends on what you need to do with this objects and how you'll handle it.

Sockets with OSGi: Bundle stopped, socket still open

I'm facing this issue working with a ServerSocket inside one of my bundles, let's just call it: FooBundle.
This FooBundle has, among others, a SocketListener.java class. This class is a Thread and to make a little overview of it, I'll paste some pseudocode:
public class SocketListener implements Runnable{
ServerSocket providerSocket;
Socket connection = null;
private boolean closeIt = false;
public void run() {
try {
//Create the server socket
providerSocket = new ServerSocket(41000, 10);
} catch (IOException e1) {
//catching the exception....
}
while(!closeIt){
try{
connection = providerSocket.accept();
in = new Scanner(new InputStreamReader(onnection.getInputStream()));
while(in.hasNext() !=false)
message = message + " "+in.next();
// bla bla bla...
} catch (IOException e) {
//bla bla...
}
finally{
try{
if (message.equalsIgnoreCase("bye"))
providerSocket.close();
closeIt = true;
}
catch(IOException ioException){
//........
}
}
As you can see, it's a simple thread that waits for a connection until the message it receives from one of the SocketClients is "bye".
This is the problem I'm facing right now: When the Bundle is stopped, I do need to restart the entire OSGi framework : If I try to restart the bundle, a java.net.BindException message is thrown: "Address already in use". So, I stopped the bundle but the socket hasn't been closed.
In OSGi, you need to take care of what the stop() method inside the Activator must include, but I just can't pass any reference of an anonymous thread to the Activator.
Imagine that this is my class diagram inside the bundle:
**FooBundle**
|__FooBundleActivator
|__FooImpl
|__SocketListener (thread)
The SocketListener thread is called from the FooImpl class as an anonymous thread.
My question is: Is there any appropiate method to have such control of anonymous threads and specifically in my case, of non-closing socket ports, inside the OSGi paradigm?
Thanks in advance.

If your bundle is told to stop then assume the guy doing the stopping knows what he is doing. Yes, your protocol expects the 'bye' but shit happens, any protocol that has problems with these things is too fragile for the real world. In general, all your tasks in OSGi should have a life cycle. So this would be my code (using DS instead of activators).
#Component
public class ProtocolServer extends Thread {
volatile ServerSocket server;
volatile Socket connection;
public ProtocolServer() {
super("Protocol Server on 4100"); // to identify the thread
}
#Activate void activate() {
setDaemon(true);
start();
}
#Deactivate void deactivate() {
interrupt();
// best effort close (even if null)
try { server.close(); } catch(Exception e) {}
try { connection.close(); } catch(Exception e) {}
join(10000); // waits 10 secs until thread exits
}
public void run() {
// loop for active component
while( !isInterrupted() )
try {
doServer();
} catch( Exception e) {
log(e);
// bad error, accept failed or bind failed
// or server socket was closed. If we should remain
// active, sleep to prevent overloading the
// system by trying too often, so sleep
if ( !isInterrupted() )
try { Thread.sleep(5000); } catch(Exception e) {}
}
}
private void doServer() throws Exception {
server = new ServerSocket(4100)
try {
while( !isInterrupted() )
doConnection(server);
} finally {
server.close();
}
}
private void doConnection(ServerSocket server) throws Exception {
connection = server.accept();
try {
doMessages(connection);
// the pseudo code exits here, but that seems
// kind of weird? If desired, interrupt
// this object, this will exit the thread
} catch( Exception e) {
log(e); // the connection failed, is not uncommon
} finally {
connection.close();
connection = null;
}
}
private void doMessages(Socket connection) {
MyScanner s = new MyScanner(socket);
String msg;
while( !isInterrupted() && !"bye".equals( msg=s.getMessage()))
process(msg);
}
}
One important design consideration in OSGi is that the components keep working even if there are failures. In a network you often have transient errors that go away on their own. Even if they don't it is desirable that the server keeps on trying while you fix the problem. Your pseudo code would be a nightmare in practice since it would disappear on any error. Any system with multiple such components tends to becomes quickly unstable.
One thing that also surprised me is that you only support one connection at a time. In general it is better to not limit this and handle the messages in their own thread. In that case, you must ensure that each created handler for a connection is also closed appropriately.

Instantiate the ServerSocket outside (probably in the Activator) and pass it to the SocketListener via a constructor. You can call serverSocket.stop() in the stop function of the Activator than.
In case you call ServerSocket.stop() a SocketException will be thrown that is a subclass of IOException. Please think of handling IOException in the while iteration in the way that it will stop executing the iteration for sure.

You need to close that listening socket regardless of the message before exiting the thread function. Then what should really make a difference for you is calling setReuseAddress(true) on that socket to allow binding the port while old connection hangs in the timeout state.
And, please please please, use better indentation technique in your code ...

Java Thread not cleaning up

I'm currently attempting to write a Logger style thread. I'm not using the existing API because this is partially an exercise to improve my threading.
When the thread is interrupted, I need it to shutdown gracefully, flushing the last of it's queued messages and closing the file streams.
Currently, it shuts down but messages are often still in queue, and I'm concerned that the file streams aren't being closed gracefully.
This is my run()
while(!shutdown){
writeMessages();
try{
Thread.sleep(5000);
}
catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
}try {
writeMessages();
} catch (CustomException e1) {
e1.printStackTrace();
}
try {
logFile.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
try {
errFile.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}

Java has very neat way to shutdown threads. It's called interruption flag. When you want to interrupt thread you simply write following code:
thread.interrupt();
thread.join();
And in the Runnable of background thread you should check interruption flag and behave accordingly. If you want thread to survive until messages are left you can do it in a following manner (I assume you have some way of checking is there any messages left. In my case it's a BlockingQueue):
Thread self = Thread.currentThread();
BlockingQueue<String> messages = ...;
while (!self.isInterrupted() || !messages.isEmpty()) {
try {
String message = messages.take();
writeMessage(message);
} catch (InterruptedException) {
self.interrupt();
}
}
One more thing. You should ensure that messages are not added to the queue after thread shutdown is requested or shutdown all threads generating messages before writing thread. This also could be done checking thread interruption flag (you need to know reference to a writer thread):
public void addMessage(String message) {
if (thread.isInterrupted() || !thread.isAlive()) {
throw new IllegalStateException();
}
messages.add(message);
}
Also I recommends you to see at java.util.concurrent package. It have a lot of useful tools for multithreaded applications.

Use the finally block to add your flushing instructions.

All other comments are good, I just want to add - make sure that you called flush() on your output streams before closing them.

How to stop ServerSocket Thread correctly? Close Socket failed

I know this has been discussed some times before, but I can't find an appropriate solution for my problem. I want to run a ServerSocket thread in the background, listening to the specified port. It's working actually, but only once. Seems that the port the server is listening to is never closed correctly and still active when I try to restart (O don't restart the thread itself). Can some tell why it is not working correctly? Thanks in advance for any help...!
edit:
I have same problem on the client side. I have a sender thread and also that one cannot not be stopped. What is the best way to do that?
The ClientConnector is just a class which connects to the server port and sends the data.
It's not a thread or anything like that.
That's my sender class:
private class InternalCamSender extends Thread {
private int sendInterval = 500; // default 500 ms
private ClientConnector clientConn = null;
public InternalCamSender() {
this.sendInterval = getSendingInterval();
this.clientConn = new ClientConnector();
}
#Override
public void run() {
while(!Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) {
clientConn.sendCamPdu(CodingScheme.BER, createNewPDU());
try {
Thread.sleep(sendInterval);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
}
And I try to handle it's behaviour like that:
if(jButton_startSending.getText().equals(STARTSENDING)) {
new Thread() {
public void run() {
iSender = new InternalCamSender();
iSender.start();
jButton_startSending.setText(STOPSENDING);
}
}.start();
} else {
new Thread() {
public void run() {
if(iSender.isAlive()) {
iSender.interrupt();
try {
iSender.join();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
iSender = null;
jButton_startSending.setText(STARTSENDING);
}
}.start();
}
Somehow I cannot stop the InternalCamSender like that. I tried with a volatile boolean before, was the same. I read the http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/guide/misc/threadPrimitiveDeprecation.html page and tried also the example What should I use instead of Thread.stop? but even that was not stopping the thread? I am lost.
Any ideas?
edit:
found the answer for my clinet sending problem here http://www.petanews.de/code-snippets/java/java-threads-sauber-beenden-ohne-stop/
even i don't know why that is working. I am sure I tried that way before.
Problem solved!

You should close your resources (the streams and socket) in a finally block, rather than a catch block - this way the resources are always closed, whether an exception is caught or not.
It's also a bad practice to call System.exit() from within a catch block or within a thread - you are forcibly shutting down the whole JVM on any instance of an error. This is likely the cause of your problem with the server socket as well - whenever any exception is encountered with reading/closing the streams, you are exiting the JVM before you have a chance to close the server socket.