Does This Article Seem Accurate (.NET)??

The main CodeGuru page has a new article on it, "Communicating over Sockets: Blocking vs. Unblocking" by Mark Strawmyer at http://www.codeguru.com/columns/dotn...le.php/c11649/

Putting aside the incorrect usage of socket terminology (i.e., "unblocking" should be "non-blocking"), does the article give good advice and good program samples. I do not use .NET, so I am uncertain. But here's one sample of code that is said to read an XML-formatted request inside a thread of a threaded server:

Code:

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private void ProcessConnection(object stats)
{
  ConnectionInfo connection = (ConnectionInfo)stats;
  byte[] buffer = new byte[4000];
  System.Text.StringBuilder input =
      new System.Text.StringBuilder();
  try
  {
      while (true)
      {
        int bytesRead = connection.Socket.Receive(buffer);
        if (bytesRead > 0)
        {
            input.Append(System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.
                        GetString(buffer));

            // Parse the message
            XmlDocument xmlInput = new XmlDocument();
            xmlInput.LoadXml(input.ToString());

            // Send back a preset response based on the type
            XmlDocument xmlOutput = new XmlDocument();
            if (xmlInput.DocumentElement.Name.Equals("uptime"))
            {
              xmlOutput.Load(@"C:\uptimeresponse.xml");
            }
            else
            {
              // Logic to generate desired exception here
            }
            connection.Socket.Send(System.Text.Encoding.
                                  ASCII.GetBytes(
                                    xmlOutput.DocumentElement.
                                    OuterXml));
        }
        else if (bytesRead == 0) return;
      }
  }
  catch (SocketException socketExec)
  {
      Console.WriteLine("Socket exception: " +
                        socketExec.SocketErrorCode);
  }
  catch (Exception exception)
  {
      Console.WriteLine("Exception: " + exception);
  }
  finally
  {
      connection.Socket.Close();
      lock (this.connections)
        this.connections.Remove(connection);
  }
}

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To me, this code will fail because it assumes that the call to Socket.Receive will receive a complete XML request, whereas it might not.

Comments?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MikeAThon

To me, this code will fail because it assumes that the call to Socket.Receive will receive a complete XML request, whereas it might not.

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I agree. Another thing is that a 'partial' XML request might still be valid XML document. A document can contain Processing Instructions after the root element and according to the spec they MUST be preserved.

- petter