CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaclient-servercommunication
janhink
janhink

Reputation: 5023

Java game server with Android client

I'm about to start a game project. It will be a network game with client-server architecture with Java server and a Web and Android clients. Impact is on low bandwidth (for use on mobile devices) and fast response. What technologies / libraries are out there for client-server communication? I am somehow experienced in web applications (GWT/Vaadin and servlets) but have no clue what to use when implementing a game server, mainly for the communication.

I am aware that I could use Java sockets with Object serialization or maybe JSON to pass the data from client to server, but I don't know how efficient in terms of bandwidth these approaches are? Or are there any more suited than these? Just pointing me in the right direction will suffice.

Thanks in advance!

Upvotes: 3

Views: 3506

Answers (3)

sockeqwe
sockeqwe

Reputation: 15929

The main problem is, if you use WebTechnologies, than you can't implement an efficient way to realize the communication from Server to Client ...

Client to Server over HTTP GET works fine, but you must use some kind of Comet to realise the communication from server to client.

Thats why plain old tcp connection over socket would may be the better to communicate with a Client, especially with Android Client.

But implementing it with tcp socket work great with android, but not with a Browser.

My solution: implement the communication via WebSocket.

WebSockets (part of HTML5) is a HTTP extension to enable full duplex communication between client and server.

The most major web browser support WebSocket, like Firefox 4, Chrome 9, Opera 10.7 BUT NOT the Internet Explorer (support planned in IE 10, comming with Windows 8)

And for android, there exists also java libaries to implement the communication and i would excpect, that they work also well with android.

Expample: http://code.google.com/p/weberknecht/

For the server side: Servlet API 3.0 support that, like Jetty 8

In my opinion WebSocket would save the problem, so you can implement a single server which supports WebSocket and communicate via WebSocket to an Android client as well as with a Browser Client (except Internet Explorer)

Upvotes: 1

Nick
Nick

Reputation: 669

As far as Android client libraries go, there's two main options. The first is just the java.net.* package in which you'll mainly use HttpUrlConnection.

The better option is to use the Apache HTTP package that also comes standard in the Android SDK. It gives you a lot more control / flexibility / verbosity in dealing with network connections.

Here is a decent example of how to use the Apache client libraries. I suggest using these, as the java.net packages are really only suited for the most basic of GET requests.

I suggest using the JSON method, because then you're not stuck having to write a Java servlet backend to deserialize the Java objects. The backend can then change independently of the client.

Upvotes: 1

umbr
umbr

Reputation: 440

It depends on timeframe of your project. If time is enough – try in your hands and compare the technologies related to your purposes.

Upvotes: -1

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