Delphi XE6 and Android Ping

Question

I want to ping to a server with indy component TidIcmpClient in Android plattform but the debugger stops the code with a "Socket Error #1". The code is in a separate thread, so i post here the thread code:

procedure TEco.Execute;

var
   contadoreco: Cardinal;
   buffer: string;

begin
     buffer:='12345678901234567890123456789012';
     eco:=TIdIcmpClient.Create(nil);
     for contadoreco:=1 to 4 do
         begin
              with eco do
                   begin
                        ReceiveTimeout:=2000;
                        Host:=servidor;
                        PacketSize:=32;
                        Ping(buffer,contadoreco);
                        ipservidor:=ReplyStatus.FromIpAddress;
                   end;
              Synchronize(procedure
                          begin
                               Form1.StringGrid1.Cells[0,contadoreco]:=ipservidor;
                               Form1.StringGrid1.Cells[1,contadoreco]:=IntToStr(tiempoeco);
                          end);
         end;
     eco.Free;
end;

The TEco object is declared here:

TEco = class(TThread)
           private
                  servidor: string;
                  eco: TIdIcmpClient;
                  terminado: Boolean;
                  tiempoeco: Cardinal;
                  ipservidor: string;
           protected
                    procedure Execute; override;
    end;

How i can ping a server with TidIcmpClient in Android? Am i doing something wrong? Superuser rights or some so? Thanks in advance for help me, and sorry for poor english. I expect you understand my question ;) :)

Answer 1

TIdIcmpClient uses a RAW socket, which requires admin/root access on most systems, including Android.

There are two ways to perform a ping in Android using Android's own APIs:

1. use the isReachable() method of the InetAddress class. However, apparently this does not work correctly .

2. Use java.lang.ProcessBuilder() to spawn /system/bin/ping . In fact, the java.lang.Process documentation shows an example of that. The downside is that you would have to manually parse the output.

Either solution would require you to use Delphi's JNI wrapper to access the relevant Android APIs.