Using Sockets to send and receive data

I assume you are using TCP sockets for the client-server interaction? One way to send different types of data to the server and have it be able to differentiate between the two is to dedicate the first byte (or more if you have more than 256 types of messages) as some kind of identifier. If the first byte is one, then it is message A, if its 2, then its message B. One easy way to send this over the socket is to use DataOutputStream/DataInputStream:

Client:

Socket socket = ...; // Create and connect the socket
DataOutputStream dOut = new DataOutputStream(socket.getOutputStream());

// Send first message
dOut.writeByte(1);
dOut.writeUTF("This is the first type of message.");
dOut.flush(); // Send off the data

// Send the second message
dOut.writeByte(2);
dOut.writeUTF("This is the second type of message.");
dOut.flush(); // Send off the data

// Send the third message
dOut.writeByte(3);
dOut.writeUTF("This is the third type of message (Part 1).");
dOut.writeUTF("This is the third type of message (Part 2).");
dOut.flush(); // Send off the data

// Send the exit message
dOut.writeByte(-1);
dOut.flush();

dOut.close();

Server:

Socket socket = ... // Set up receive socket
DataInputStream dIn = new DataInputStream(socket.getInputStream());

boolean done = false;
while(!done) {
  byte messageType = dIn.readByte();

  switch(messageType)
  {
  case 1: // Type A
    System.out.println("Message A: " + dIn.readUTF());
    break;
  case 2: // Type B
    System.out.println("Message B: " + dIn.readUTF());
    break;
  case 3: // Type C
    System.out.println("Message C [1]: " + dIn.readUTF());
    System.out.println("Message C [2]: " + dIn.readUTF());
    break;
  default:
    done = true;
  }
}

dIn.close();

Obviously, you can send all kinds of data, not just bytes and strings (UTF).

Note that writeUTF writes a modified UTF-8 format, preceded by a length indicator of

the easiest way to do this is to wrap your sockets in ObjectInput/OutputStreams and send serialized java objects. you can create classes which contain the relevant data, and then you don't need to worry about the nitty gritty details of handling binary protocols. just make sure that you flush your object streams after you write each object "message".