Client Failed to connect, how do I attempt a reconnect?

[James Koehler]

I am very new to java and I am creating a portable network class. Everything works fine except one thing, if the client fails to connect to the server, say it is not up yet, how do I attempt another connection with a socket?
do
if say socket = new socket(IP, Port);
loop until timeout retries reached or connected

Here is the code

import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
 
public class Network extends Thread
{
 
protected InputStream Incoming;
protected OutputStream Outgoing;
public Socket socket = null; // Client's Connection To The Server
public ServerSocket port = null; // Server's Connection To The Client
 
public Network () {}
 
protected String ReadNet(Socket sock) throws IOException // Read from the Network
{
Incoming = sock.getInputStream();
String string="";
char a;
while ((a = (char) Incoming.read()) != '\n')
string = string + a + "";
return string;
}
 
protected void WriteNet(Socket socket, String string) throws IOException // Send over the Network
{
Outgoing = socket.getOutputStream();
if (string.charAt(string.length() - 1) != '\n')
string = string + '\n';
for (int a = 0; a < string.length(); a++)
Outgoing.write(string.charAt(a));
}

public Socket Connect(String IPAddress, int Port, int Log, boolean isServer, int TimeOut)
{
int TimeOutTries = 0;
if (isServer) // Establish a connection and wait for a Client to connect
{
try
{
port = new ServerSocket(Port, Log);
System.out.println(InetAddress.getLocalHost() + " is waiting for connections.");
socket = port.accept();
System.out.println(socket.getInetAddress() + " Connected.");
}
catch (IOException e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
System.exit(1);
}
}
else // Establish a connection to the Server
{
do
{
try
{
socket = new Socket(IPAddress, Port); // Will only try once, need to figure out how to get this to try multiple times
System.out.println("The Client is connected to " + IPAddress + ":" + Port);
}
catch (Exception e) {}
if (!Status()) // Check If Connected. If Not Then Try To Reconnect To The Server.
{
TimeOutTries++;
System.out.println(TimeOutTries); 
 } // Currently Not Working Right
} while (!Status() && TimeOutTries < TimeOut);
if (TimeOutTries == TimeOut)
System.out.println("Failed to connect to " + IPAddress + ":" + Port);
}
return socket;
}

public void Disconnect (boolean Server) throws IOException
{
Incoming.close();
Outgoing.close();
socket.close();
if (Server)port.close();
System.out.println("Closed the connection");
}

public boolean Status () // Return if Connection is Up or Down
{
boolean status = false;
try
{ 
status = socket.isConnected();
} catch (Exception e) {
status = false;
}
return status;
}
}

[Freddy Wong]

I haven't fully read your code, but if you want to reconnect to a host, you can do something like this:

Socket socket = null;    
while (true)
{
    try
    {
        socket = new Socket(host, port);
    }
    catch (SocketTimeoutException ex) 
    {
        System.out.println("Trying to connect to " + host + "...");
    }
    catch (IOException ex) 
    {
        ex.printStackTrace();
    }
}

One more thing, if the socket fails to connect, the socket object will be null. So when you check whether the socket is connected or not (socket.isConnected()), it will throw a NullPointerException.

Hope this helps.

[James Koehler]

No that does not help but thank you for helping. The problem is that when I try to reuse the socket over and over again it just skips over it after the first failed attempt. I would like to be able to attempt reconnects without having to restart the application.

[James Koehler]

Ok I see what was wrong now. It would appear that the socket was just initializing the first time and took a few seconds to start and if it failed to connect, the next time you tried to reconnect it would only look for > a second before moving on so a while loop was necessary. Thank you for your help and I will be back I am sure once I start getting into the hard parts.