I am about to implement a API for my TCP/IP server written in Java. Right now I have a temporary method that takes a String, executes a command based on the String and returns a String basically like the following.
public void communicate(BufferedReader in, PrintWriter out) {
while(true) {
out.println(handleCommand(in.readLine()));
}
}
private String handleCommand(String command) {
if (command.equals("command1") {
// do stuff
return "Command 1 executed";
} else if (command.equals("command2") {
// do some other stuff
return "Command 2 executed";
}
}
I really want to do something more extensible, smarter and stateful, so I could handle more complex and stateful commands and without the method/class getting bloated.
How would you start?
Suggestions, ideas, or links for further reading are very welcome.