The TeamConnect project contains definitions for a TeamConnectServer and a TeamConnectClient designed to allow team members to join teams on the server and share their status with eachother.
TeamConnect comes with prebuilt runners to set up and run a server or a client.
To run a TeamConnectServer from the project, first compile the runner class by navigating to the TeamConnect/src folder and executing:
javac teamConnect/runner/ServerRunner.java
Afterwards you can run the class by executing in the same directory:
java teamConnect.runner.ServerRunner port teamNames statuses
Where port is the port to run the server on, teamNames is a string containing up to 50 team names delimited by slashes, and statuses is a string contains up to 50 status names delimited by slashes. For example:
java teamConnect.runner.ServerRunner 2000 "The A Team/The B Team/The C Team" "Working Hard/Hardly Working/Asleep"
To run a TeamConnectClient from the project, first compile the runner class by navigating to the TeamConnect/src folder and executing:
javac teamConnect/runner/ClientRunner.java
Afterwards you can run the class by executing in the same directory:
java teamConnect.runner.ClientRunner hostName hostPort displayName
Where hostName is the hostName of the server the client should connect to, hostPort is the server's port, and displayName is the desired username for the client. For example:
java teamConnect.runner.ClientRunner "127.0.0.1" 2000 "Rusty Arbuckle"
The transmission protocol used by TeamConnect Clients and Servers is managed by the teamConnect/transmission package. Both the client and server rely exclusively on UDP Datagram sockets, so there are no persistent connections. Transmissions always happen in pairs, with a client sending a ClientMessage to the server, and the server immediately handling any actions requested by the client and then responding with a ServerMessage which acknowledges the action taken and may contains information requested by the client. Both ClientMessages and ServerMessages have a message type byte in their headers that specify what type of information the contains or action they relate to. Following are the different message types:
ClientMessage types which may be sent to a server are:
- Network ID Request: A request for a unique network ID. This message's body contains the displayName the client wishes to use.
- Status Update: A request for the server database to update the status entry for this user.
- Team Status Request: A request for the names of all members of a team and their statuses.
- Server Description Request: A request for the teams and status options supported by a server.
ServerMessage types which may be sent in response to a ClientMessage are:
- Error: Indicates something went wrong in handling the client's request.
- ACK New User: Indicates that a new user profile was succesfully created for the client. The body of the message contains the networkID associated with the new profile.
- Server Description: The body of the message contains a list of all the teams and all the status options the server supports.
- Team Status: The body of the message contains the usernames and statuses of each member of a team requested by the client.
- ACK Status Update: Indicates that a client's request to update their status of change teams was handled succesfully.
Further details about the structure of messages is provided in the relevant classes' Javadocs.
