java calling method outputs nothing

Question

I have a method which takes an IP, receives data and stores it in a List. At the end of the method it returns this List. However when this method is called, the list is empty. I think it is a really simple fix and it's me being stupid but could anyone point me to where I have gone wrong so I dont do it again?

public List<String> receiveDataFromOperator(){
    List<String> dataRec = new ArrayList<String>();

    try
    {

        System.out.println("Client Program");

        //Hard coded IP Address
        String ip = "146.176.226.147";

        //Hard coded port
        int port = 500;
        // Connect to the server
        Socket sock = new Socket(ip, port);

        // Create the incoming stream to read messages from
        DataInputStream network = new DataInputStream(sock.getInputStream());

        // Display our address
        System.out.println("Address: " + sock.getInetAddress());
        String line;

        // Loop until the connection closes, reading from the network
        while ((line = network.readUTF()) != null)
        {
            dataRec.add(line);


        }

        sock.close();
    }
    catch (IOException ioe)
    {


        //Test output for the arraylist size
        System.out.println(dataRec.size());


        for(int i = 0; i<dataRec.size(); i++){
            System.out.println("Line " + i + dataRec.get(i) + "\n");

        }



    }// End of catch

    return dataRec;

}//End of method

Answer 1

If the server is writing binary data with DataOutputStream.writeUTF() it should work.

If you are sending text from the server you need to read text from the socket with BufferedReader.readLine() .

BTW: When you get an IOException you generally shouldn't ignore it and pretend it didn't happen esp. when the program is not behaving as you expect.