associate arbitrary information with the socket using GCDAyncSocket - objective-c

Question

I have created a simple client server application with GCDAsyncSocket.
host broadcast its service via bonjour, clients get connected to it, then each client send specific information to host, after completing requests by host, it should now be able to send each request to its corresponding client.
Here when client disconnected (maybe rebooting WiFi) before It gets its completed request and connected again its connected host and port can change.
so for I denitrifying clients I want to store list of connected clients in a dictionary
key : vendorID (specific to each client and can't change)
value : connected host and port (gcdAsyncSocket instance)
how can I send arbitrary information (vendorID) with socket?
it seems GCDAsyncSocket has a property named UserData, I set it with vendorID in the client
but in the host it's NULL.
client:
- (BOOL)connectWithService:(NSNetService *)service {
BOOL _isConnected = NO;
// Copy Service Addresses
NSArray *addresses = [[service addresses] mutableCopy];
if (!self.socket || ![self.socket isConnected]) {
// Initialize Socket
self.socket = [[GCDAsyncSocket alloc] initWithDelegate:self delegateQueue:dispatch_get_main_queue()];
//adding deviceID to sockect to identify connected clients in the host
self.socket.userData = #"vendorID2308746238764021";
// Connect
while (!_isConnected && [addresses count]) {
NSData *address = [addresses objectAtIndex:0];
NSError *error = nil;
if ([self.socket connectToAddress:address error:&error]) {
_isConnected = true;
}
else if (error) {
NSLog(#"Unable to connect to address. Error %# with user info %#.", error, [error userInfo]);
}
}
} else {
_isConnected = [self.socket isConnected];
}
return _isConnected;
}
Host:
- (void)socket:(GCDAsyncSocket *)socket didAcceptNewSocket:(GCDAsyncSocket *)newSocket {
NSLog(#"Accepted New Socket from %#:%hu", [newSocket connectedHost], [newSocket connectedPort]);
//both userData is null!
NSLog(#"%#",newSocket.userData);
NSLog(#"%#",socket.userData);
//adding new socket to the list of connected clients
//using ip and port of the scoket as key
[self.clients setObject:newSocket forKey:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#-%d", [newSocket connectedHost], [newSocket connectedPort]]];
// Notify Delegate
[self.delegate tcpHost:self didHostClientOnSocket:newSocket];
}
does anyone has any idea how should I solve this kind of client-host information exchange?

Answer 1

ClientSide: In my TCPClient class when client connected to the server, the first packet I send is Identity packet:
//server can identify device
- (void)sendIdentity
{
NSData *identifcationData = [[UIDevice deviceID] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
HAPacket *packet = [[HAPacket alloc] initWithData:identifcationData type:HAPacketTypeIdentity action:HAPacketActionUnknown];
[self sendPacket:packet];
}
Server: gets this packet and identify the Client
In TCPHost: after client connected I store it in a temporary array.
in socket:didReadData I check:
if (tag == TAG_BODY) {
//first packet is always for identifaction. if client has not identified, its id is empty
Client *unknownClient = [[self.temp linq_where:^BOOL(Client *client)
{
return client.ID == nil || [client.ID isEqualToString: #""];
}] linq_firstOrNil];
if (unknownClient && (unknownClient.ID == nil || [unknownClient.ID isEqualToString: #""])) {
NSLog(#"identifying client...");
[self identifyClient:unknownClient withData:data];
}
else
{
// parse the packet as usual
}