Receive data from socket - debug gone and code hangs - c#

I followed the example in MSDN about C# socket programming.
private static void StartClient() {
// Connect to a remote device.
try {
// Establish the remote endpoint for the socket.
// The name of the
// remote device is "host.contoso.com".
IPHostEntry ipHostInfo = Dns.Resolve("host.contoso.com");
IPAddress ipAddress = ipHostInfo.AddressList[0];
IPEndPoint remoteEP = new IPEndPoint(ipAddress, port);
// Create a TCP/IP socket.
Socket client = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork,
SocketType.Stream, ProtocolType.Tcp);
// Connect to the remote endpoint.
client.BeginConnect( remoteEP,
new AsyncCallback(ConnectCallback), client);
connectDone.WaitOne();
// Send test data to the remote device.
Send(client,"This is a test<EOF>");
sendDone.WaitOne();
// Receive the response from the remote device.
Receive(client);
receiveDone.WaitOne();
// Write the response to the console.
Console.WriteLine("Response received : {0}", response);
// Release the socket.
client.Shutdown(SocketShutdown.Both);
client.Close();
} catch (Exception e) {
Console.WriteLine(e.ToString());
}
}
I've created a simple test application that works.
The app sends and receives the response almost instantaneous.
So now the challenge is to implement the solution where the socket connects to an external device that will process the information from the socket and then send back a response.
At the line "Send test data to the remote device" --> the device receives this information at processes.
The debug keeps on going. The process is still going on in the remote device because I can see the data churning away.
But once it gets to receiveDone.WaitOne(); the debug is gone and the application hangs.
The problem here is the remote server is still processing. When it is done it is supposed to send back a response. Nothing happens.
Since I'm not that experienced with socket coding, I was wondering if anyone has run into this before. And if yes, how would I go about solving this issues so I can get a response back and the application doesn't hang?
Update:
I feel like smacking myself in the head.
The issue isn't with the WaitOne().
The debug is gone from WaitOne() because it's waiting for a response.
When the response comes, it goes to Receive() which then calls ReceiveCallback().
private void Receive(Socket client)
{
try
{
// Create the state object.
StateObject state = new StateObject();
state.workSocket = client;
// Begin receiving the data from the remote device.
client.BeginReceive(state.buffer, 0, StateObject.BufferSize, 0,
new AsyncCallback(ReceiveCallback), state);
//THIS IS WHERE THE CODE DOESN'T CONTINUE.
}
catch (Exception e)
{
string error = e.InnerException.ToString();
}
}
When ReceiveCallback() is complete and it finishes getting all the data - it stops. It doesn't go back to my code where I initiate the sending and receiving of data.
It's supposed to go:
1. Get input request string
2. Pass it to the socket code
3. Socket code sends input request string
4. Socket code receives response string
5. Take the response string and do something with it
So it stops at #4 and ends without completing all the steps.
Am i missing code for it to continue the flow? Or have I set the process up incorrectly?
Thanks again for the help.
#John - thanks for updating my title. I'll try to keep the title in mind for the future.
========================================
UPDATE 2:
If I change the code and do not use the Receive() as it is in the MSDN sample, MSDN sample link and do something like:
var response = client.Receive(buffer);
var message = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(buffer);
This would work and everything continues. I need to make sure that the response isn't cut off though. But then that would defeat the purpose of it by async client correct?
Hmm....
thanks again for everyone's input.

OK. I got it after seeing how I went wrong.
I didn't check for the end response. I assumed that the end of the buffer transmission would set off the method that would return the response.
Thanks to everyone for your help. I couldn't have come to the solution without your help.
cheers!

Related

Listen to responses from 2 TcpClient instances against the same IP, but different ports

I'm working on a TCP connection where my client connects to a server's IP on 2 different ports. So I have 2 instances of TcpClient objects, one connecting to the IP on port 9000 and the other on port 9001.
The aim of 2 connections is that the server uses the active connection on port 9000 to give certain responses to the client frequently, and the client uses these responses to form and send a request on port 9001.
Now, the first time I connect on 9000, I get a response, I then form a request and fire off via 9001. Now I have a feeling I'm doing something wrong with the way I'm managing asynchronous requests to both ports, but I can't figure an alternate way of doing this:
IPAddress IPAddress = IPAddress.Parse("192.168.1.10");
public static async Task ConnectToPort9000()
{
TcpClient TcpClient1 = new TcpClient();
try
{
await TcpClient1.ConnectAsync(IPAddress, 9000);
if (TcpClient1.Connected)
{
byte[] Buffer = new byte[1024];
while (await TcpClient1.GetStream().ReadAsync(Buffer, 0, Buffer.Length) > 0)
{
//Server returns a message on this port
string Port9000Response = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(Buffer, 0, Buffer.Length);
//Setting ConfigureAwait(false) so that any further responses returned
//on this port can be dealt with
await Task.Run(async () =>
{
await SendRequestToPort9001BasedOnResponseAsync(Port9000Response);
}).ConfigureAwait(false);
}
}
}
catch (Exception)
{
throw;
}
}
private async Task SendRequestToPort9001BasedOnResponseAsync(string Port9000Response)
{
//Open connection on port 9001 and send request
TcpClient TcpClient2 = new TcpClient();
await TcpClient2.ConnectAsync(IPAddress, 9001);
if (TcpClient2.Connected)
{
//Handle each string response differently
if (Port9000Response == "X")
{
//Form a new request message to send on port 9001
string _NewRequestMesssage = "Y";
byte[] RequestData = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(_NewRequestMesssage);
new SocketAsyncEventArgs().SetBuffer(RequestData, 0, RequestData.Length);
await TcpClient2.GetStream().WriteAsync(RequestData, 0, RequestData.Length);
await TcpClient2.GetStream().FlushAsync();
//Handle any responses on this port
//At this point, based on the request message sent on this port 9001
//server sends another response on **port 9000** that needs separately dealing with
//so the while condition in the previous method should receive a response and continue handling that response again
}
else if (Port9000Response == "A")
{
//Do something else
}
}
}
The issue I am having at the moment is, after I send the request on port 9001, when processing any response messages on port 9001, the server has already sent me a response on port 9000, but my while loop on the first method isn't getting triggered, and it seems like that's because it's still executing the second method to process request/response on port 9001. I tried using ConfigureAwait(false) to basically fire and forget, but it doesn't seem to be working. Am I handling asynchronous processes the wrong way? Or should I look at alternatives such as action/delegates?
The aim of 2 connections is that the server uses the active connection on port 9000 to give certain responses to the client frequently, and the client uses these responses to form and send a request on port 9001.
Please don't do this. Socket programming is hard enough without making it extremely more complicated with multiple connections. Error handling becomes harder, detection of half-open connections becomes harder (or impossible), and communication deadlocks are harder to avoid.
Each socket connection is already bidirectional; it already has two independent streams. The only thing you need to do is always be reading, and send as necessary. The read and write streams are independent, so keep your reads and writes independent.

Disposing each socket client that is connected to the socket server

I have just recently started development for a server - multiple clients application using Socket.
The server doesn't need to keep track of the connected clients; If there is a client that requests for connection, server accepts it. If there is a request from any client (to get some data), server will response to that client.
/// <summary>
/// Callback when server accepts a new incoming connection.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="result">Incoming connection result object.</param>
private void AcceptedCallback(IAsyncResult result)
{
try
{
Socket clientSocket = _socket.EndAccept(result); // Asynchronously accepts an incoming connection attempt
if (clientSocket.Connected) // Check if the client is in 'Connected' state
{
StateObject state = new StateObject();
state.clientSocket = clientSocket;
clientSocket.BeginReceive(state.buffer, 0, StateObject.BufferSize, SocketFlags.None, // Start listening to client request
ReceiveCallback, state);
}
else
{
clientSocket.Close(); // Terminate that client's connection
Log.writeLog("TCPServer(AcceptedCallback)"
, "Client's status is not connected.");
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Log.writeLog("TCPServer(AcceptedCallback)"
, ex.Message);
clientSocket.Close();
}
finally
{
Accept(); // Start to accept new connection request
}
}
I have 3 questions about this:
For each BeginReceive that I create for the newly connected client, does my server application creates a new thread/object to hold that client?
If after the client is connected, and the network cable is pulled off at the client side and plug back in, the client will connect to the server again and this is considered a new connection on the server, if this scenario occurs again and again, will my server program crashes?
Hence, do I need to keep track of each client that is connected to the server, and find a way to track their state so I can call Close/Dispose on them?
So far in my testing for scenario 2, there are no abnormalities detected in my server program, but I hope someone would help clarify this for me. Thank you.
No, it will use a IO completion thread from a pool of threads.
No, you can code and should code to cater for this. If something happens on the client side that the OS can detect, it will send a TCP fin/ack to the server. This should result in any BeginXXX method still waiting to go the Async Callback Method. From there your call to EndXXX method should either throw an exception or return zero bytes being read from the socket.
This depends on what you mean by keep track of to dispose of them properly. If you mean dispose of them if you detect an error, no, you can put clean up code in your EndXXX methods. If you mean so that you can signal clients gracefully if you shut the server down, then yes.

C# .Net Socket Server Client

I've got a little problem with the .Net Sockets in C#.
I programmed a client and a server working with TCP.
As the client is opened it sends a handshake to the server. The server answers with it's state (clientexists, clientaccepted,...). After that the application sends a getdata-request, abandons the connection and listens for the server's 'response'. Now, the server builds a connection to the client and sends all the data the client needs.
The code and everything else works, but the problem:
On our company testserver it works fine, on the live server only the handshake works. After it the client doesn't receive any more data. Serverapplication is the same on both servers.
I thought the problem was caused by some firewall (server wants to build a tcp connection to the client -> not good), but the system administrator said there is no firewall that could block that.
Now I'm searching for a ('cheap') solution that doesn't take too much time and changes in code. If anyone knows how to theoretically solve that, that would be great.
BTW: I am not allowed to do anything on the live server other than run the serverapplication. I don't have the possibility to debug on this server.
I can't publish all of my code, but if you need to see specific parts of it, ask for it please.
---EDIT---
Client-Server communication
1) Client startup
Client send handshake (new tcp connection)
2) Server validates handshake and saves IP
Server responds with it's client state (same tcp connection)
3) Client acknowledges this response and abandons this connection
Client sends getdata-request (new tcp connection)
Client abandons this tcp connection, too
4) Server receives getdata-request and collects the needed data in the main database
Server sends all the collected data to the client (multiple tcp connections)
5) Client receives all data and displays it in it's GUI (multiple tcp connections and the order of the data is kept by working with AutoResetEvents and Counts of sockets to send)
This is the main part my code does. It's by far not the best but it was for me as I wrote it I guess. Step one, two and three work as intended. The processing of the data works fine, too.
Another thing i forgot to mention is that the solution uses two Ports '16777' and '16778'. One to receive/listen and one to send.
My code is based on the MSDN example of the asynchronous server and client.
Sending a handshake (and getdata-request)
public void BeginSend(String data)
{
try
{
StateObject state = new StateObject();
state.workSocket = sender;
byte[] byteData = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data);
sender.BeginSend(byteData, 0, byteData.Length, 0,
new AsyncCallback((IAsyncResult e) =>
{
Socket socket = (Socket)e.AsyncState;
SocketBase.StateObject stateObject = new SocketBase.StateObject();
stateObject.workSocket = socket;
socket.BeginReceive(stateObject.buffer, 0, 256, SocketFlags.None, new AsyncCallback(this.ReadCallback), (object)stateObject);
}), sender);
sender = RetrieveSocket(); //Socketreset
Thread.Sleep(100);
}
catch /*(Exception e)*/
{
//--
}
}
Server listener
public void StartListening()
{
listener = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork,
SocketType.Stream, ProtocolType.Tcp);
// Bind the socket to the local endpoint and listen for incoming connections.
try
{
listener.Bind(localEndPoint);
listener.Listen(System.Int32.MaxValue);
while (true)
{
// Set the event to nonsignaled state.
allDone.Reset();
// Start an asynchronous socket to listen for connections.
listener.BeginAccept(
new AsyncCallback(AcceptCallback),
listener);
// Wait until a connection is made before continuing.
allDone.WaitOne();
}
}
catch (Exception e)
{
//--
}
}
public void AcceptCallback(...);
public void ReadCallback(...);
Socket send
private void Send(Socket handler, String data)
{
Socket t = RetrieveSocket(((IPEndPoint)handler.RemoteEndPoint).Address);
// Convert the string data to byte data using ASCII encoding.
byte[] byteData = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data);
// Begin sending the data to the remote device.
t.BeginSend(byteData, 0, byteData.Length, 0,
new AsyncCallback(SendCallback), t);
}
Socket send all data part (answer to getdata-request | socToHandle should be the socket of the previous connection of the getdata-request)
private void SendAllData(Socket socToHandle, string PakContent)
{
#region IsThereADatetime? //Resolve a given datetime
#region GiveClientNumberOfPackets //Send the client info about how much he has to receive (See line below)
Send(socToHandle, "ALERT#TASKCOUNT;OPT-" + GetBestDate(dateStart) + EndSocket);
#region #SendResouces
#region #SendGroups
#region #SendTasks
}
Looking through my old code I have one idea =>
Could I send everything over the same connection by changing:
Socket t = RetrieveSocket(((IPEndPoint)handler.RemoteEndPoint).Address);
(which creates a new connection) to something that uses the same connection?
If that would work, how can I do that?
And would the listener part of the client still receive single packets?
Servers and their environment are configured to handle incoming requests properly. Clients are usually behind a router, which by default make them unable to receive incoming connections from outside their network (a good thing).
To enable incoming connections, you could configure your router to forward all requests for a certain port number to your machine. No one else on your network would be able to run the client then, though.
This is why in a typical multiple clients-single server environment, the client makes all the connections, and only the server requires any changes to the network landscape.
I don't know why you chose to connect to the clients from the server side, but I would strongly advise against this - any cheap solution that uses this mechanism may turn out to be very expensive in the end.

Empty message while receiving data from socket

I'm trying to connect to an UAP Server (used for sending and receiving USSD messages in Huawei) using Socket class but there's a problem while receiving data from server. I can connect to server correctly and also I can send data to server but I have problem with receiving data.
This is my code for connecting and sending message:
IPAddress ipAddress = IPAddress.Parse("127.0.0.1"); //server
IPEndPoint remoteEP = new IPEndPoint(ipAddress, 2020);
clientSocket = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork, SocketType.Stream, ProtocolType.Tcp);
clientSocket.Connect(remoteEP);
//bind to socket, here I send bind message
Bind();
and inside the Bind function, I call receive method to get data from server:
private static void receive()
{
try
{
// Create the state object.
StateObject state = new StateObject();
state.workSocket = clientSocket;
// Begin receiving the data from the remote device.
clientSocket.BeginReceive(state.buffer, 0, StateObject.BufferSize, 0,
new AsyncCallback(receiveCallback), state);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("receive | " + ex.ToString());
}
}//receive
Here you can see my Wireshark log while connecting, sending data and receiving data from server:
But as you can see, last two messages from server are highlighted with red color which means there's a problem with receiving data from server. Also I don't see data field in details:
I really don't know what's the problem, is this a problem with server or not? Should I use another Socket client to connect and receive data from server or not?
TCP reset packets aren't a part of your application level protocol and your application shouldn't be expected to see them.
Exactly what is the incorrect behavior with your application, because with what you've posted, I'm not seeing any problems.

C# TCP Socket.Receive issue when reusing socket

preface:
I've been stumped on this for awhile now and am not having much luck finding what I need.
I have a C# (.NET 3.5) Service. One thread acts as an asynchronous listener for incoming TCP connections. When data comes in I spawn off a new worker thread to handle the data, and sends an acknowledgement back.
On a second thread in the same service we send commands out, until today it would gather information from the data base, build a new socket, connect then ship the command and I'm using the Socket.Receive to invoke blocking and wait for a response (or until a timeout occurrs).
Everything has been working great until a new client has a need to send data to us so fast (5-10 second intervals) that we can no longer open a new socket to get a command through. So I started looking into when a command needs to be sent that the "listener" thread has a client connected. If that client is connected currently use that socket instead of creating a new one.
Issue:
I'm to the point where I can send my command back on the same socket the listener receives, but when the client sends data back as the response it takes twice for the Socket.Receive method to actually fire thinking it received data. The first time it gets into my listener class, the 2nd time, in my command class where I actually want it to be.
Question:
Is there some option or something I need to do before calling my Socket.Receive method to ensure the data gets to the correct place?
In my listener class I have a list of objects "CSocketPacket"
public class CSocketPacket
{
public CSocketPacket(System.Net.Sockets.Socket socket)
{
thisSocket = socket;
this.IpAddress =
((System.Net.IPEndPoint)socket.RemoteEndPoint).Address.ToString();
}
public System.Net.Sockets.Socket thisSocket;
public byte[] dataBuffer = new byte[BUFFER_SIZE];
public string IpAddress; //Use this to search for the socket
}
Then when I send a command I'm creating a new tcp socket object:
client = new Socket(
AddressFamily.InterNetwork, SocketType.Stream, ProtocolType.Tcp);
IPEndPoint ep = new IPEndPoint(
IPAddress.Parse(Strings.Trim(ipAddress)), port);
IPEndPoint LocalIp = new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Parse(
System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["SourceIP"]), port);
then I'm looking into my listener class list to see if that socket is connected:
if (listener.SocketExists(ipAddress))
{
// set the client socket in this class to the
// instance of the socket from the listener class
SocketIndex = listener.FindSocketInList(ipAddress);
if (SocketIndex != -1)
{
// might need to figure out how to avoid copying the socket
// to a new variable ???
client = listener.ConnectedSockets[SocketIndex].thisSocket;
SocketBeingReUsed = true;
}
}
else
{
// try to connect to the client
client.Connect(ep);
}
finally I go through my steps of sending and receiving
if (client.Connected)
{
if (client.Poll(1000, SelectMode.SelectWrite))
{
int sentAmount = Send(ref client);
client.ReceiveTimeout = 90000; //90 seconds
returnData = ReceiveData(ref client, sentAmount);
}
}
everything works up to the point in my ReceiveData(ref client, sentAmount) method where I call the Socket.Receive(data, total, Socket.ReceiveBufferSize, SocketFlags.None); method.
I've been using a tool called Hercules to test sending/receiving packets across two machines on my home network.
Does anyone have any ideas of what I can do to solve this? I do apologize for such a lengthy question but I want to try to give as much info and not paste my entire project. I'm up for any suggestions.
Disclaimer: I wrote this code approx 3 years ago, so I'm pry doing things I shouldn't be I'm sure :P
Thanks to all who read this.
Sincerely,
Chris
OK, so now I'm following along! Given what you've said in the comments above, then the way to solve the problem is to have a single class/thread that reads from the socket (which is the correct way to read from sockets anyway) and then it will coordinate which class gets the data. I think it might work a little like the Command Design Pattern.

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