How does a Bluetooth Socket connection work on Android?

Question

I am new to bluetooth. I understand on Android I can connect to another bluetooth device as a client through a BluetoothSocket connection. How do I handle data that is received? In what format does data get sent from the server to the client?

Answer 1

Going through your questions:

How do I handle data that is received?

The ideal way to handle data is with threads (although it is possible to use a service). A single connected thread running through an infinite loop will attempt to try to read data from the stream that is provided by the socket connection.

In what format does data get sent from the server to the client?

Data is sent from server to client via bytes (specifically arrays of bytes). If you know the type of data being received, there are plenty of functions to convert this data to the desired variable type.

For a complete example of how bluetooth works between devices, I'd highly recommend taking a look at the source of the BluetoothChat Sample application. There's also the Bluetooth overview.