Joseph DiBella

The Internet has been very popular in the past few years. With its popularity still growing, increased demand for Internet network software has grown as well. One of the greatest advantages to developing Internet software with Java is in its robust networking support built into the core language. The java.net package provides us with classes representing URLs, URL connections and sockets. Combined with the java.io package, we can quite easily write sophisticated platform-independent networking (Internet) applications. The URL Classes provided by Java have a great amount of functionality. In many cases, it is not necessary to explicitly use sockets in Java programming because the URL classes provide socket connections in the background for you. However, there are times when Socket Objects make the most sense to use in specific applications. One of the questions that ... (more)

Programming an HTTP Web Server with Java

It seems that there is an increasing demand for Internet based applications. Every time I turn on my television, I see Internet-related advertisements or commercials ending with "See us on the Web at: http:// www.somebigcompany.com'." These URLs actually refer to other computers out there in cyberspace. Each of these computers has one or more socket-based Web Servers administering connections, file transfers and other various duties. As the Internet begins to play a greater role in commerce, the demand for Web Servers or customized Web servlets will grow. In this article, we wil... (more)

Building a Chat Applet Part 2

Last month, we started a fun project in creating a chat room applet. The overall project illustrates how to create Perl scripts which will be used as back-ends for your Java applets. The Java applets will interact with the Perl program using a standard CGI interface. While you can have a lot of fun with this lightweight chat applet, my goal for you, however, is to look beyond this little applet and ask yourself, "How else can I use this method of sending data to a Web server, and process it on the Server side?". You can, for instance, use this to make a shopping cart, maintain da... (more)

Building A Chat Applet

Java enables us to embed miniature applications called Applets within Web pages which can process data, perform graphical animations and access databases, among other things, in a dynamic fashion. In addition, these Applets work fine on several different types of computers accessing these Web pages over the Internet. The dilemma with using Java in real world Internet Web solutions for small businesses is not necessarily a limitation of the Java language, but limitations placed upon it by Internet service providers. Most small businesses do not maintain their own Web servers; inste... (more)