Sending binaries or strings by a client socket - go

Question

I'm studying networks, and I'm doing a tcp server with Go. One of the challenges I'm studying is to send binaries or strings by a socket client to a server, save the server response to a txt, and compare it to the original data that was sent.
The problem is that the binaries do not arrive completely on the server.
Server
package main
import (
"fmt"
"io"
"log"
"net"
)
func main() {
l, err := net.Listen("tcp", ":8000")
if nil != err {
log.Println(err)
}
defer l.Close()
for {
conn, err := l.Accept()
if nil != err {
log.Println(err)
continue
}
defer conn.Close()
go ConnHandler(conn)
}
}
func ConnHandler(conn net.Conn) {
recvBuf := make([]byte, 4096)
for {
n, err := conn.Read(recvBuf)
if nil != err {
if io.EOF == err {
log.Println(err)
return
}
log.Println(err)
return
}
if 0 < n {
data := recvBuf[:n]
fmt.Println(string(data))
}
}
}
Client
package main
import (
"fmt"
"log"
"net"
)
func main() {
conn, err := net.Dial("tcp", ":8000")
if nil != err {
log.Println(err)
}
var s string
fmt.Scanln(&s)
conn.Write([]byte(s))
conn.Close()
}
I'm generating the binaries using the command on linux:
head -c100000 /dev/urandom > binary_message.txt
I run the server:
./server > result.txt
And I send this data by the client using:
./client < binary_data.txt
In the end the file binary_data.txt have 98KB but the result .txt only has 0KB.

Answer 1

The problem is with scanning the binary from input. You didn't see it because the errors were ignored and not printed or otherwise handled. fmt.Scanln returns an error (so does the Write function). You should always check for possible errors happening.
I rewrote the client to load the file from disk itself as I don't think using stdin is a good fit for binary data.
package main
import (
"flag"
"io"
"log"
"net"
"os"
)
var fileName = flag.String("file", "", "file to send")
func main() {
flag.Parse()
conn, err := net.Dial("tcp", ":8000")
if nil != err {
log.Println(err)
}
defer conn.Close()
f, err := os.Open(*fileName)
if err != nil {
log.Println(err)
return
}
defer f.Close()
b := make([]byte, 1024)
for {
n, err := f.Read(b)
if err != nil {
if err == io.EOF {
log.Println("Done sending")
return
}
log.Println(err)
return
}
if _, err := conn.Write(b[:n]); err != nil {
log.Println(err)
return
}
}
}
You can use it with:
go run . -file=binary_message.txt
or if you have built the binary:
./client -file=binary_message.txt
I suggest you do the same for the server. Open a file for writing and write the binary data into that file. Use a flag to pass in the filename to write to. That will be cleaner than piping stdout to a file.