Is there a more effective way to send coordinates than through split() or splittokens()?

Eiroth · February 2017

So I'm trying to send coordinates between four players through a server using the networking library, and currently it seems like the easiest way to do that is to send a string such as:

positions= 0 + "," + ballX + "," + ballY + "," + p1 + "," + p2 + "\n";
myserver.write(positions);

And then receive it through:

void clientEvent(Client client) {
receivemessage=client.readUntil("\n");
datain = splittokens(receivemessage,",\n");
}

However, this seems to lag behind a bit as the buffer fills up and it slowly drifts further and further from real time. Should I stop sending strings and parsing them with splittokens() in favour of some other method, or should I just make sure that the client clears the buffer every once in a while?

Lord_of_the_Galaxy · February 2017

The \n is not required in splittokens. Instead use split(receivemessage, ','). This is because the reading of message will stop automatically as soon as a line break (=\n) is found.

Eiroth · February 2017

Thank you, I'll do that instead. So is splitToken() the way to go?

Lord_of_the_Galaxy · February 2017

I'd say so. The other method may be to convert the float into the corresponding bytes and send to the server, then convert back to the corresponding float at the Server. But this is only recommended if the CPU is capable of the extra load but the network connection is too slow to send Strings.

Eiroth · February 2017

For anyone who might stumble upon this post, the aforementioned lag was due to an inefficient use of server.available() . When I replaced it with an array of clients and used serverEvent() to assign positions in the array to connecting clients, the program ran much more smoothly.