How to read data coming from TCP Socket separated by a specific delimeter

Question

I need to read Bytes of data from a Server using Socket connection over TCP. The data is in the form of a Byte Stream delimited by delimited by one or more octets with a value of 255 (0xFF)

I am using BufferedInputSream to read the data. A part of my code is below:

String messageString = "";
DataInputStream in = new DataInputStream(new BufferedInputStream(socket.getInputStream()));
byte[] bytes = new byte[16 * 1024];
System.out.println("Receiving Bytes");
  while(true)
  {
    bytesRead = in.read(bytes);
    messageString += new String(bytes,0,bytesRead);
    if (<SOME CONDITION TO KNOW THAT DELIMITER IS RECEIVED>)
      {
        System.out.println("Message Received: " + messageString);
        //Proceed to work with the message
        messageString = "";
      }
  }

I need the IF condition so that I know that I have received one data packet and start processing the same. I don't know the length of the message that I am going to receive neither I have the information to the length in the incoming message.

Please help me read this type of byte data. Any help is truly appreciated.

Answer 1

If your delimiter is 255 you can just check the data you just read for that value:

bytesRead = in.read(bytes);
int index= bytes.indexOf(255);
if (index<0)
{
    messageString += new String(bytes,0,bytesRead);
}
else //<SOME CONDITION TO KNOW THAT DELIMITER IS RECEIVED>)
{
    messageString += new String(bytes,0,index);
    System.out.println("Message Received: " + messageString);
    //Proceed to work with the message
    messageString = "";
}