CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javasslasynchronousio
700 Software
700 Software

Reputation: 87783

Java 7 Async SecureSocket?

Java 7 shipped with asynchronous I/O. Does anyone here know if I can use this to make async calls to a SecureSocket?

Rephrased: If I am using sslContext.getSocketFactory().createSocket("127.0.0.1", 42), then using socket.getOutputStream() and socket.getInputStream() to communicate in a blocking way; what changes would I need to make to access the async functions which would allow me to re-write my code to work asynchronously?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2307

Answers (3)

Mariano Barrios
Mariano Barrios

Reputation: 501

As Bruno correctly mentions, SSLEngine is the standard way of doing asynchronous SSL. But that class is seriously hard to use.

I came across the same problem some time ago and ended up writing my own library. There are some examples out there and of course there is also the code inside projects like Netty, etc. But neither option is robust or easily reusable.

TLS Channel wraps an SSLEngine in a ByteBuffer and allows to use it just like normal SocketChannels.

Upvotes: 2

Bruno
Bruno

Reputation: 122649

SSL/TLS in Java with Non-blocking I/O isn't new in Java 7, but was introduced in Java SE 5. This can be done using the SSLEngine instead of sockets.

The SSLEngine is notoriously difficult to use. You can in principle convert between channels and InputStream/OutputStreams using the Channels class, but there's also quite a lot to do in terms of using the SSLEngine itself. Here are a few pointers:

Upvotes: 5

RudolphEst
RudolphEst

Reputation: 1250

Asynchronous IO (part of Java NIO) does not use streams but rather channels, buffers and selectors. You can definitely still connect to secure servers though. There will be a lot of changes required to your current code though, so you might not want to update to Asynch IO unless you have a very good reason.

I recommend this tutorial as a starting point.

Upvotes: 1

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