transfering arrays over network

[Svend Rost]

Hi,

Im trying to transfer an 2-dim array of integers from a servlet
to a mobile device.. but how?

My approach:

void myMethod()
{
 HttpConnection hc = .....; //we open the url
 try{
 
 DataInputStream in = new DataInputStream(hc.openInputStream());
 
 //something magical...
 
 }catch(Exception e)
 {...}
}

Now.. how do I proceed?

There is a readInt() method in DataInputStream, which returns the next
byte as an integer. Is that the way to go (I know the array is an 2x10
integer matrix) ? or can I do something more clever

Thanks in advance.

/Svend, who's tired and would like to ZzZzz

[Srinivasa Raghavan]

I dont know whether it's a good approach. But why cant you think about serialization. Serialize the required data send it to the output stream , read it back at other end and deserialize it.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Serialization will make the data stream bigger and the code slower; for a mobile app, this may not be worth it.

On the server side, you could use a DataOutputStream to write the individual ints of the array, and on the client side, read them using a DataInputStream and plug them into a new array object. You'd have to compute the full size of the data to put into the Content-length header, of course. If the array isn't of a fixed size, you'll want to transmit the array dimensions as the first two integers, then read them first at the client and use them to allocate the array.

[Srinivasa Raghavan]

Thanks Ernest for a valuable reply.