Learning Network Programming with Java

Chapter 3. NIO Support for Networking

In this chapter, we will focus on the Java New IO (NIO) package's Buffer and Channels classes. NIO is an alternative for the earlier Java IO API and parts of the network API. While NIO is a broad and complex topic, our interest is how it provides support for network applications.

We will explore several topics, including the following:

• The nature and relationship between buffers, channels, and selectors
• The use of NIO techniques to build a client/server
• The process of handling multiple clients
• Support for asynchronous socket channels
• Basic buffer operations

The NIO package provides extensive support to build efficient network applications.

Java NIO

Java NIO uses three core classes:

• Buffer: This holds information that ...