Java Network Programming, Third Edition

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book, easy and fun to read
Review: Good, but not great.

Before I read this book I had no clue on how to write a network program. This book does an excellent job of taking you from knowing nothing to being ready to take a crack at it.

Contains two great chapters on i/o and threads that you will need.

However, I thought that it left some obvious questions unanswered. I had the search the net to fill in the gaps. For example, I want to write a telnet enabled application but the book left me in the dark as to when to get the tools to construct one (doing it from scratch is a big waste of time). BTW the tools aren't in the JDK exactly but are available (for free) elsewhere, kindaof like the RE packages are.

Rating:
Summary: Misapprehensions and misinformation. Avoid.
Review: I love this book. Absolutely love it. One of the great things here is the tie in of network programming with java's IO classes. Networking in Java is IO, and this book explains it upfront.

The overviews of IO and Threading in the first couple of chapters can really solidify these topics if you are sketchy on them. The rest of the book is dedicated to going over the .net classes & explaining each one, providing in depth/useful examples for each.

The appendix of the book give a good enough overview of RMI & JavaMail, more than enough to get you going using either package.

While this is not a book for total beginners, if you need to learn the .net package, or want to take your Java skills to the network, buy this book!

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Choice
Review: I read this book and really enjoyed it. It is easy to read, and has lots of useful code. I like all books written by this author. If you like this book, then you should try his book on JAVA and XML. That book is well written. I would recommend this networking book to anyone who wants to learn JAVA and Networking. Some LAN experience or a networking course will help you. Buy this book -- it is worth an investment!!!

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Choice
Review: I read this book and really enjoyed it. It is easy to read, and has lots of useful code. I like all books written by this author. If you like this book, then you should try his book on JAVA and XML. That book is well written. I would recommend this networking book to anyone who wants to learn JAVA and Networking. Some LAN experience or a networking course will help you. Buy this book -- it is worth an investment!!!

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive reference (3rd Edition)
Review: If you're doing anything with Java and Network I/O programming, the topic will most likely be covered in this book. The author does a great job describing not only how Java handles network programming, but the concepts and details of network programming in general. The book takes the core java.net classes and describes each method, what it does, how to use it, what to watch for, code examples, etc - it takes the API Javadoc and expands upon it.

It's a great Java Network API reference book.

Rating:
Summary: Network Programming Book with Few Network Topics...
Review: Java Network Programming is a great topic and very challenging to write about. In the past decade, Client Server and Networking where the most popular topics in the industry.

Initially, Java was not an Internet/Web language oriented. Later versions, the language migrated into a more network oriented and became the language of choice among financial institutions, and others, because of its high productivity capabilities (mainly, shorter development curve.)

Here are a few points that I'd like to make concerning this book:

1.The authors took on themselves a very large assignment, rather than reducing the scope of the book, so they could deal efficiently with the content and represent it in more technical details and depth, just as O'Reilly publication does so often. The variety of topics discussed in the book could be topics for books themselves, such as Web Concepts, Threads, Java I/O...

2.A few topics are not directly affiliated with Networking, such as Threads, Java Mail API, etc. I was surprised to find the "HTML in Swing" chapter, which is a total shift from the Networking Layer to the Presentation Layer.

3.The book is missing important and advanced topics in Networking, such as IIOP, Distributed Objects, EJB and maybe CORBA. I was surprised to find a chapter about RMI - an old form of distributed objects, which was replaced by IIOP and EJB in recent years. RMI was combined with IIOP (RMI/IIOP) because its poor performance. Why would anyone want to study an old topic?

4.This book is lacking of a conceptual discussion about Networking Layers in general, to help users understand why with Java, Network Programming could be a piece of cake... Conceptually speaking, indeed, with Java it's a much easier task.

5.The bright spot here are the samples that are almost in a "copy and paste" condition. They are easy to understand and implement.

Rating:
Summary: In-depth API coverage
Review: The value of this book is in the depth of the coverage it gives to every topic. As opposed to the usual code fragments glued together with the necessary minimum of expository text, this book takes it's time to explain topics in detail. It's clear that in it's third revision the author has learned how to teach the Java network APIs.

Topics covered include both client and server code with sockets and UDP, non-blocking I/O, and protocol and content handlers, as well as many others. This is very in-depth, very well written with effective use of graphics. And better yet you will learn about the protocols themselves as well as the APIs.

This is an outstanding book, easily the best book, on the Java network APIs.

Rating:
Summary: Up to date, complete and thorough
Review: This book covers all the important things to know about network programming in JDK1.3 and Java2. The content and quality is how you expect it from O'Reilly books: thorough, complete, practical with clear examples, and with a good theoretic foundation.

The first three chapters provide theory about basic network and web concept and explains what you can do with Java networking. A lo of very interesting things, and that motivated me to read further. Chapter 4 and 5 are about Java I/O and threads and might be redundant for Java programmers, who already know basic Java stuff. But those chapters are necessary to understand the examples in all the following chapters. Chapter 6-19 deal with all the various networking topics and Java classes that deal with URL's, Internet addresses, sockets and datagrams, protocol and content handlers, RMI and JavaMail. The organization of these last chapters is topical; in most of the times you can understand a chapter without reading the previous ones, just pick out the one that you are interested in. (Interesting chapter about parsing HTML with JEditorPane, Swing has some unexpected applications!)

I think the author gave a complete and thorough coverage of all the necessary topics. The author does not stray from its topics, is sometimes a bit dry in his explanations, and gives some important side information, e.g. about security aspects of the different Java versions in regards to RMI.

Take in mind that this is the second edition from August 2000, updated to Java2, with some 200 or more extra pages, and we can use this book for the next couple of years.