Can I communicate between Java and C# using just sockets?

Question

More specifically, if a computer has a server (a java.net.ServerSocket instance) can I connect to it using a C# System.Net.Sockets.Socket instance?

Answer 1

The main issue is that you need to be very careful with the encoding of the data that you send and receive. Here is a pair of programs that work together. The C# client sends a string, by first sending its length as an integer, and then sending the bytes of the string itself. The Java server reads the length, then reads the message and prints an output to the console. Then composes an echo message, computes its length, extracts the bytes and sends it back to the C# client. The client reads the length, the message and prints an output. There should be a way to avoid all the bitwise stuff, but honestly I'm a little rusty with this stuff, especially on the Java side.

A Java server:

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.net.ServerSocket;
import java.net.Socket;

public class JavaSocket {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {

        ServerSocket serverSocket = new ServerSocket(4343, 10);
        Socket socket = serverSocket.accept();
        InputStream is = socket.getInputStream();
        OutputStream os = socket.getOutputStream();

        // Receiving
        byte[] lenBytes = new byte[4];
        is.read(lenBytes, 0, 4);
        int len = (((lenBytes[3] & 0xff) << 24) | ((lenBytes[2] & 0xff) << 16) |
                  ((lenBytes[1] & 0xff) << 8) | (lenBytes[0] & 0xff));
        byte[] receivedBytes = new byte[len];
        is.read(receivedBytes, 0, len);
        String received = new String(receivedBytes, 0, len);

        System.out.println("Server received: " + received);

        // Sending
        String toSend = "Echo: " + received;
        byte[] toSendBytes = toSend.getBytes();
        int toSendLen = toSendBytes.length;
        byte[] toSendLenBytes = new byte[4];
        toSendLenBytes[0] = (byte)(toSendLen & 0xff);
        toSendLenBytes[1] = (byte)((toSendLen >> 8) & 0xff);
        toSendLenBytes[2] = (byte)((toSendLen >> 16) & 0xff);
        toSendLenBytes[3] = (byte)((toSendLen >> 24) & 0xff);
        os.write(toSendLenBytes);
        os.write(toSendBytes);

        socket.close();
        serverSocket.close();
    }
}

A C# client:

using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Sockets;

namespace CSharpSocket
{
    class MainClass
    {
        public static void Main (string[] args)
        {
            string toSend = "Hello!";

            IPEndPoint serverAddress = new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Parse("192.168.0.6"), 4343);

            Socket clientSocket = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork, SocketType.Stream, ProtocolType.Tcp);
            clientSocket.Connect(serverAddress);

            // Sending
            int toSendLen = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetByteCount(toSend);
            byte[] toSendBytes = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(toSend);
            byte[] toSendLenBytes = System.BitConverter.GetBytes(toSendLen);
            clientSocket.Send(toSendLenBytes);
            clientSocket.Send(toSendBytes);

            // Receiving
            byte[] rcvLenBytes = new byte[4];
            clientSocket.Receive(rcvLenBytes);
            int rcvLen = System.BitConverter.ToInt32(rcvLenBytes, 0);
            byte[] rcvBytes = new byte[rcvLen];
            clientSocket.Receive(rcvBytes);
            String rcv = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(rcvBytes);

            Console.WriteLine("Client received: " + rcv);

            clientSocket.Close();
        }
    }
}