Java Network Programming (Paperback)

by Elliotte Rusty Harold (Author)
Key Phrases: multicast sockets, login name, returning information, Elliotte Rusty Harold, The Socket Class, Remote Method Invocation (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Does this sound familiar? You know Java well enough to write standalone applets and applications, even multithreaded ones, but you know next to nothing about the language's networking capabilities. And guess what--your next job is to write a network-centric Java program. Java Network Programming serves as an excellent introduction to network communications generally and in Java. The book opens with information on network architectures and protocols and the security restrictions placed on applets. Quickly, the author gets to the meat of networked Java with a complete elucidation of the InetAddress class, the URL-related classes, applet-specific networking methods, and sockets. The author also covers packets, Remote Method Invocation (RMI), and servlets.

The one serious shortcoming of this book is that it does not include a companion disk, which is the case with most O'Reilly books. You'll have to visit the publisher's FTP site for the code if you dislike typing the examples manually. On the whole, though, this is an excellent tutorial that will guide you through the world of Java networking as smoothly as possible.

Product Description
The network is the soul of Java. Most of what is new and exciting about Java centers around the potential for new kinds of dynamic networked applications. Java Network Programming describes the java.net package, which contains classes for communications and working with networked resources. This Java 1.1 programming book is a complete guide to writing sophisticated network applications, including many kinds of clients and servers. It pays special attention to content and protocol handlers, a still largely unexplored area of Java's network facilities, and gives you an advanced look at the new areas like multicasting, using the server API, and RMI.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 442 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly; 1 edition (February 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565922271
• ISBN-13: 978-1565922273
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #426,001 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Intro to Networking with Java, June 5, 2001

By	David C. Johnson (Spencer, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Java Network Programming (Java Series (O'Reilly & Associates).) (Paperback)

I love this book. Absolutely love it. One of the great things here is the tie in of network programming with java's IO classes. Networking in Java is IO, and this book explains it upfront.

The overviews of IO and Threading in the first couple of chapters can really solidify these topics if you are sketchy on them. The rest of the book is dedicated to going over the .net classes & explaining each one, providing in depth/useful examples for each.

The appendix of the book give a good enough overview of RMI & JavaMail, more than enough to get you going using either package.

While this is not a book for total beginners, if you need to learn the .net package, or want to take your Java skills to the network, buy this book!

38 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Misapprehensions and misinformation. Avoid., July 8, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Java Network Programming (Java Series (O'Reilly & Associates).) (Paperback)

Avoid. This book appears to have quite a reputation, but despite being in its 2nd edition, it is riddled with errors. The book exhibits some fundamental misapprehensions about TCP/IP; as a result it perpetrates some astonishing misinformation, much of it quite basic. Partial list: the nature of a socket close operation; what IOException when closing a socket means; what happens when the listen backlog is exceeded; specification of the ServerSocket constructors; Nagle's algorithm (Socket.setTcpNoDelay); linger; keepalive; etc etc.

Of the examples which do work, the PortScanner and LocalPortScanner are provided in versions which perpetrate atrocities on the local machine and network by not closing sockets. Multi-homing very cursorily treated, not even indexed. Firewalls apparently treated in one page. Role of TTL in multicast apparently ignored.

The text is verbose and repetitive, and a number of the examples are irrelevant. Fully 50% of the Sockets for Servers chapter consists of a rather irrelevant excursion into HTTP and HTML; the examples have bugs, not that they have much point. Also, what pray have HTML rendering and parsing in Swing got to do with networking? 30 irrelevant pages on this; nice to have, but why here?

Author seems to think HotSpot is a JIT. Typos in the index, not encouraging. Many impending JDK 1.4 enhancements will shortly obsolete this book. Avoid it. For TCP/IP and UDP fundamentals, buy W.R. Stevens Unix Network Programming. -

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In-depth API coverage, November 10, 2004

By	Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Java Network Programming, Third Edition (Paperback)

The value of this book is in the depth of the coverage it gives to every topic. As opposed to the usual code fragments glued together with the necessary minimum of expository text, this book takes it's time to explain topics in detail. It's clear that in it's third revision the author has learned how to teach the Java network APIs.

Topics covered include both client and server code with sockets and UDP, non-blocking I/O, and protocol and content handlers, as well as many others. This is very in-depth, very well written with effective use of graphics. And better yet you will learn about the protocols themselves as well as the APIs.

This is an outstanding book, easily the best book, on the Java network APIs.