TCP packets come in chunks, not seperated

Question

Example to connect:

func connectToServer(ip, port):
    client = StreamPeerTCP.new()
    client.connect(ip, port)  

Then in my update, I use: (this might be where my problem is)

if client.is_connected() && client.get_available_bytes() >0:
    print(str(client.get_string(client.get_available_bytes())))

Now, I'm running a basic TCP Server in nodejs. If I do:

socket.write('PATCH 1.10')
socket.write('PATCH 1.10')
socket.write('PATCH 1.10')
socket.write('PATCH 1.10')
socket.write('PATCH 1.10')
socket.write('PATCH 1.10')
socket.write('PATCH 1.10')
socket.write('PATCH 1.10')

It actually doesn't send as individual messages, so when I get my string from get_string (above) I receive:

Is there a way to make it so each time a message (packet) is sent, they come as individual packets instead of added to the TCP Stream? Thanks for reading!

Comments

Sorry folks, looks like this is just how TCP Works (Stream Based)

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13279754/nodejs-tcp-server-ondata-small-chunks

I don't think it's Godot's fault. I'm just used to my WebSocket server :(

More info here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17446491/tcp-stream-vs-udp-message

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This might be related: https://godotengine.org/qa/5298/tcp-networking-messages-arriving-clumps-missing-something?show=5298#q5298

Answer 1

This is part of the way TCP works -- it is stream-based, not packet-based, unlike UDP.

The simplest way to do what would want, though, would be to pick some "message delimiter character", like \n or even \0, and then append all bytes into an array until you meet it. Then you would process the next message.

A more involved way to solve it would be to encode all messages as JSON, and then (somehow) monitor when the JSON structure ends, and the next begins.

Comments

@Boljidar, I did the \n delimited approach, works awesome! Thank you!