title: Using a DataOutput/Input Stream with Netty?
body: <p>I'm attempting to venture into non-blocking networking using Java and I had decided on using the Netty Networking Library to do so. I currently have a fully working server/client application that uses Strings to handle the networking functions. The server/client will dissasemble the strings and get the data from it; However this is not what I need to be doing.</p>
  
  <p>I've been looking at the DataOutputStream and it seems it has the functions that I would like to be able to use over a network.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>writeByte/readByte</li>
  <li>writeBytes/readBytes</li>
  <li>writeChar/readChar</li>
  <li>writeDouble/readDouble</li>
  <li>writeShort/readShort</li>
  <li>writeFloat/readFloat</li>
  <li>writeInt/readInt</li>
  <li>writeUTF/readUTF.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Currently everything I've been doing has been in UTF Format, basically. I've just been sending bytes using (bytes[])String</p>
  
  <p>I'm having a very hard time figuring out how to implement a system like this. I don't want to continue using this inefficient string based networking. It's a waste of bandwidth and I'm not learning anything doing it. </p>