Sending (and then handling messages) to a server

Question

Good morning Say I have various types of messages to send across the network but obviously I can only send them as an object. How do I split where the various messages are sent when they get to the server? I've been going around in circles and the obvious way (in my head) to handle this is to have some sort of header (using an interface) and then do a switch depending on what's in the header and cast the object to the specific type. But something's telling me this is a bad way of doing it it doesn't feel very OO. any suggestions? Alex

Alex · Answer

Thanks for the reply as we speak this is the way I am implementing it and was the way I had in mind originally I was just curious as to whether or not there were any other best practices when it comes to this type of data transfer.

Matthew Cox · Answer

Well the simplest method (and most common) is to take your objects (whatever type they may be) then covert them to byte arrays and use the Socket class (and partnering classes) to send them across a socket connection. A google search on chat programs using sockets will yield you many results. But instead of sending byte[] of strings you are sending you own objects. Hope that helps.