Getting Started

Before getting started with Quick Link, it is important to understand the relation clients have with a server.
Clients connect to and communicate only with the server. Unlike a Peer to peer connection, clients cannot communicate between them.
However, the server can send messages to all connected clients allowing for message relaying, if required.

Host

A host is similar to a client. It can send and receive message to a server.
The only difference being that the host also creates a local server hosted on their machine.

Messages

Messages are a stream of data to exchange between the server and clients. It's a sequence of data types encoded and written to a stream in binary form.
The receiver can then read those data types in order and process the data how it needs.

Messages are attributed a type which the developer creates depending on the kind of message they need to transfer. When a message is created with a type, only event listeners attached to that type of message will be called once the message arrives.

Creating a local server

To create a local server, a Host is needed along with a port on which the server will be listening.

using QuickLink;

public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        int port = 54080;

        using (Host host = new Host(port))
        {
            Console.WriteLine($"Local server created: Listening on port {port}.");
            Console.WriteLine("Press ENTER to stop")
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}

Creating a client and connecting

When creating a Client, the server's address and port are required.
Upon connecting or disconnecting from the server, specific events will be fired.

using QuickLink;

public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        string address = "127.0.0.1";
        int port = 54080;

        using (Client client = new Client())
        {
            client.Connected.Subscribe(() => {
                Console.WriteLine("Connected to server.");
            });

            client.Disconnected.Subscribe(() => {
                Console.WriteLine("Disconnected from server.");
            });

            client.Connect(address, port);

            Console.WriteLine("Press ENTER to stop")
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}

Creating messages

Creating and writing data to a message can be done using the MessageWriter.
A MessageType needs to be provided to initialize the message.

MessageType GenericMessage = MessageType.Get("GenericMessage");

using (MessageWriter writer = new MessageWriter(GenericMessage))
{
    writer.WriteString("Hello, world!");
    writer.WriteFloat(3.141592f);
}

These messages can then be sent to the server or to clients using the appropriate methods:

server.BroadcastMessage(writer);

Receiving messages

Once a message is sent, it will cause the message received events to be fired on the receiver(s).
Listeners need to be attached to a specific event type and accept a MessageReader parameter.

MessageType GenericMessage = MessageType.Get("GenericMessage");

client.MessageReceived.Subscribe(GenericMessage, (reader) = {
    string message = reader.ReadString();
    float pi = reader.ReadFloat();

    Console.WriteLine($"Received message '{message}' and PI is: {pi}!");
});
Note

The handler field name is the same (MessageReceived) for clients, host and server.

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