How a HTTP server respondes to a client's request

could you please give me a sample code on how an Http Server(Java) receives the request of a client(android)? I mean the client sends the request via Httppost, how the server takes the co开发者_JAVA技巧ntent of these requests in order to see the context and reply? I am trying to built a chat application.

Thank you in advance!

The server-side of HTTP is usually implemented using the protocol stack provided by a web container. You would then implement your application's server-side as servlets. There are numerous tutorials on this.

If that's the way you want to proceed, look at one of the standard web containers; e.g. Tomcat, Jetty, Glassfish, etc. The source code for all of these is available for you to browse, though I should warn you that they are all complicated under the hood.

Assuming that your HTTP service is going to be delivering JSON or XML (rather than HTML) to clients, you may want to look into using a RESTful framework.

Have a look at ServerSocket. Keep in mind that accept() blocks and, as you will probably run it in a service, you will want to time it out and check for the completion of the service. That should probably run in its own thread as should the responders to requests.

From there, you can open input and output streams to receive the request and write the response. There are any number of packages that can help you with the interaction, or you can roll your own, but it doesn't seem like you've done a lot of homework. Perhaps some searching, reading, and more specific questions would more you along more quickly.