Timed thread to poll servers

[rockking8350]

Hey everyone,

New to the forums here. So a little background on what I am trying to do. I am in a group of two in my software design class and the assignment is Wink murder. My partner and I decided to go with a client/server set up to handle the 5-7 player minimum. Figured peer to peer gets to ugly after about three people. So I am writing the server. But I decided I am gonna write two servers. The game server and the master server that keeps a running total of all publicly available servers. So a client starts up, goes to the master server first and requests a list of all servers that have openings. I find it pointless to send a server that is full. Then that client picks a server and goes off to play. That's all I need to know about the client. But the game server is handling two different types of connections. The client connections and the master server connection. The master server, in order to keep its list up to date, will poll all servers in its list of known servers to verify they are still running. If not they are removed. I am having some trouble with the polling part. I send the string "POLL" to the server using a PrintStream and nothing happens. The server has a class to handle this one thing and I have some debug code in there to verify things are working but nothing ever pops up. Any suggestions? Also on a side note, the master server's server manager sleeps its thread for a second after all servers have been polled.

Thanks

[Norm]

. I send the string "POLL" to the server using a PrintStream and nothing happens

Hard to say why without having code to execute for testing.

[rockking8350]

this is the run method for the server manager

	public void run()
	{
		while(sManagerThread.isAlive())
		{
			//System.out.println("Polling Servers");
			int index = 0;
			while(index != servers.size())
			{
				if(servers.get(index).pollServer())
				{
					index++;
				}
				else
				{
					servers.remove(index);
					System.out.println("Server Count: " + String.valueOf(servers.size()));
				}
			}
 
			try
			{
				Thread.sleep(1000);
			}
			catch(Exception e)
			{
			}
		}
	}

this is the run method for the game server. this is inside a private class that the only job is to handle the polling

		public void run()
		{
			while(mcThread.isAlive())
			{
				try
				{
					if(mcSkt.getInputStream().available() > 0)
					{
						InputStream in;
						in = mcSkt.getInputStream();
						BufferedReader bin = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
 
						String data = bin.readLine();
						System.out.println(data);
 
						if(data == "POLL")
						{
							String toSend = "";
							toSend += String.valueOf(cCount);
							toSend += ",";
							toSend += String.valueOf(mCount);
							System.out.println("Responding to POLL");
							pStream.println(toSend);
						}
						else
						{
							System.out.println("Error Reading Network Data");
						}
					}
				}
				catch(Exception e)
				{
					System.out.println("Error Reading Network Data");
				}
			}
 
		}

and this will probably be important. this is the code that the master server's server manager will call.

public boolean pollServer()
	{
		pStream.print("POLL");
		InputStream in;
		try 
		{
			Thread.currentThread().sleep(250);
			in = skt.getInputStream();
			BufferedReader bin = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
			String data = bin.readLine();
			int secondStart = 0;
			String cCountMessage = "";
			try
			{
				for(int i = 0; i < data.length(); i++)
				{
					if(data.charAt(i) == ',')
					{
						secondStart = i + 1;
						break;
					}
					else
					{
						cCountMessage += data.charAt(i);
						cCount = Integer.valueOf(cCountMessage);
					}
				}
				String mCountMessage = "";
				for(int i = secondStart; i < data.length(); i++)
				{
					if(data.charAt(i) == ',')
					{
						secondStart = i + 1;
						break;
					}
					else
					{
						mCountMessage += data.charAt(i);
						mCount = Integer.valueOf(mCountMessage);
					}
				}
			}
			catch(Exception e)
			{
			}
			return true;
		} 
		catch (IOException | InterruptedException e) 
		{
			System.out.println("Error Polling Server" + IP);
			return false;
		}
	}

[Norm]

How can this code be compiled and executed for testing? Can you post code that will compile and execute?

[rockking8350]

I would, but there are more than one class file involved. can I share a link to a dropbox folder on here?

I hope so. here is the zip, inside are the source(completed as far as now) for the master server and game server. the game server is still being worked on.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/36695541/winkMurder.zip

[Norm]

Can you make a small complete program that compiles, executes and shows the problem?

[rockking8350]

no. because there are a lot of class dependencies. download the zip and open it. all the code is in there. but you will need to change the properties.prop file. inside there is a line that has "Master-IP:" on it. you will need to set that to be whatever IP you run the master server on

[Norm]

Sorry, that sounds like too much work to do to setup for testing.

[rockking8350]

okay, well here is some more info then. I ran it. and the server manager will output polling servers until a game server actually needs to be polled. then it quits. so would that put the error on the game server side?

[Norm]

Hard to say what causes the problem.

[rockking8350]

the thread doesn't start on the server side that handles the polling requests!

///---UPDATE---///
okay, so I got the game server thread to start. but the master server still stops outputting "Polling servers" when a game server connects

[Norm]

Without code that compiles and executes, I can't make any suggestions other than to add lots of println statements to print out messages to show execution flow and the values of variables as they are changed and used.

[rockking8350]

I got it narrowed down to the issue I think. I ran the debug with some breakpoints and I think the issue is being generated from the InputStream. it seems like it never gets the InputStream from the socket.

[Norm]

never gets the InputStream from the socket.

I've not seen that happen but there is always a first time.
Is that on the server or the client?

[rockking8350]

its on the game server which is a "client" of the master server.

[Norm]

I was referring to the type of socket. But it really doesn't make any difference as a help to solving the problem.
Without a Short, Self Contained, Correct Example to test with I can't do any debugging.

[rockking8350]

omg! I just found the issue. on the master server, when I sent the poll request I didn't use println. so when I tried to read the string there wasnt any way to know that I had reached the end of the line.