I made a software couple years ago using VB6 that works as a TCP server, receives multiple connections from clients.
The basic Idea of the software is to listen on a specific port, accept connections from different clients and pass each connection to a separate winsock which analyzes the data, looks in DB, replies with the proper message, and then closes the connection.
Here's some code:
Initializing the sockets when the application starts:
For i = 1 To MaxCon
Load sckAccept(i)
Next i
sckListen.Listen
Accepting connections:
Private Sub sckListen_ConnectionRequest(ByVal requestID As Long)
Dim aFreeSocket As Integer
aFreeSocket = GetFreeSocket
If aFreeSocket = 0 Then
sckAccept(0).Accept requestID
sckAccept(0).SendData "Server is full!"
sckAccept(0).Close
Else
sckAccept(aFreeSocket).Accept requestID
End Sub
Receiving data, analyzing it, and reply:
Private Sub sckAccept_DataArrival(Index As Integer, ByVal bytesTotal As Long)
Dim sData As String
sckAccept(Index).GetData sData
'Do lots of analyizing and search in DB
'
'
sckAccept(Index).SendData "Message"
'
'
DoEvents
sckAccept(Index).Close
End Sub
Everything was working fine, but now the number of connections has increased (couple dozens per second), so the software started getting Out of stack space
exception (because of DoEvents
).
I know that in many cases DoEvents
is evil, but if I remove it, the application UI won't respond (because of the over load on the thread) and some data might not be delivered.
So, my question is: does anyone have an idea of how to get around this problem with/without using DoEvents
?
Note: I know that VB6 doesn't really support multi-threading and might be a PITA for such situations. I'm actually planning to upgrade the software and re-create it using .Net
, but that will take some time. That's why I need to fix this problem in VB6 since the software is written in VB6 for now.
Well, I managed to figure out the problem, and have solved it.
The short answer
Do NOT use DoEvents
.. Some data won't be delivered? Well, close the connection ONLY in the SendComplete
event.
The long answer
First thing first:
Why I used DoEvents
in the first place? because some of the sent messages were not being delivered. A lot of articles/questions on the internet suggest using DoEvents
after Socket.SendData
in order to guarantee the data arrival to the receiver.
I digged deeper into this trying to figure out why the messages aren't delivered. I found out that this problem only occurs when closing the connection after sending the message:
Socket.SendData "Message"
'
'
Socket.Close
So, I simply moved the line that closes the connection to the SendComplete
event, removed the DoEvents
sentence -since I don't need it anymore-, and the problem is gone :)
Private Sub sckAccept_SendComplete(Index As Integer)
sckAccept_Close (Index)
End Sub
I hope this could help someone who has the same problem.