Some basic Concepts in SuperSocket

Chinese (China)

Keywords: basic concepts

Package Type

The package type represents the data structure of the package we receive from the other end.

The type TextPackageInfo(SuperSocket.ProtoBase.TextPackageInfo,SuperSocket.ProtoBase) is the simplest defined package type within SuperSocket. It only standards for a text string.

public class TextPackageInfo
{
    public string Text { get; set; }
}

But we usually have more complex network package structure than that. For instance, the package type is defined below tells us their package has two fields, Sequence and Body.

public class MyPackage
{
    public short Sequence { get; set; }

    public string Body { get; set; }
}

Some packages may have a special field which can tell which kind of package it is. We call this field "key" here. This key field also tells which kind logic should handle the pakcgae. It is very common scenario in the design of network applications. In this case, you just need implement the interface IKeyedPackageInfo for your package type if the key is an integer:

public class MyPackage : IKeyedPackageInfo<int>
{
    public int Key { get; set; }

    public short Sequence { get; set; }

    public string Body { get; set; }
}

In the following parts of the document, we will explain how to define commands to handle different kinds of packages according the value in the key field.

PipelineFilter Type

This kind type plays an important role in the network protocol decoding. It defines how we decode IO stream into packages which can be understanded by the application.

These are the basic interfaces for PipelineFilter. At least one PipelineFilter type which implement this interface is required in the system.

public interface IPipelineFilter
{
    void Reset();

    object Context { get; set; }        
}

public interface IPipelineFilter<TPackageInfo> : IPipelineFilter
    where TPackageInfo : class
{

    IPackageDecoder<TPackageInfo> Decoder { get; set; }

    TPackageInfo Filter(ref SequenceReader<byte> reader);

    IPipelineFilter<TPackageInfo> NextFilter { get; }

}

CommandLinePipelineFilter (SuperSocket.ProtoBase.CommandLinePipelineFilter, SuperSocket.ProtoBase) is one of our most common PipelineFilter templates. We use it in documents and samples very often.

Create the SuperSocket Host with Package Type and PipelineFilter Type

After you define your package info type and the pipeline filter type, you should be able to create a SuperSocket host by SuperSocketHostBuilder.

var host = SuperSocketHostBuilder.Create<StringPackageInfo, CommandLinePipelineFilter>();

In some cases, you may need implement IPipelineFilterFactory to get full control of creating of PipelineFilter.

public class MyFilterFactory : PipelineFilterFactoryBase<TextPackageInfo>
{
    protected override IPipelineFilter<TPackageInfo> CreateCore(object client)
    {
        return new FixedSizePipelineFilter(10);
    }
}

Then you will need to use the PipelineFilterFactory after your create the SuperSocket host:

var host = SuperSocketHostBuilder.Create<StringPackageInfo>();
host.UsePipelineFilterFactory<MyFilterFactory>();