junixsocket

junixsocket is a Java/JNI library that allows the use of Unix Domain Sockets (AF_UNIX sockets), and other address/protocol families (such as AF_TIPC), from Java.

Unix sockets API, in Java, AF.

• junixsocket is the most complete implementation of AF_UNIX sockets for the Java ecosystem.
• Supports other socket types, such as TIPC (on Linux), as well!
• Comes with pre-built native libraries for most operating systems and platforms, including macOS, Linux, Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, AIX, IBM i.
• Additionally, you can build and run junixsocket natively on IBM z/OS (experimental).
• Supports all Java versions since Java 8.
• Supports both the Java Socket API and NIO (java.net.Socket, java.net.SocketChannel, etc.)
• Supports streams and datagrams.
• Supports Remote Method Invocation (RMI) over AF_UNIX.
• Supports JDBC database connectors (connect to a local database server via Unix sockets).
  • Generic AFUNIXSocketFactory for databases like PostgreSQL
  • Custom socket factory for MySQL Connector/J, as recommended by Oracle
• Supports peer credentials.
• Supports sending and receiving file descriptors.
• Supports the abstract namespace on Linux.
• Supports socketpair, and instantiating socket classes from file descriptors.
• Supports HTTP over UNIX sockets (using NanoHTTPD, OkHttp, and jetty).
• Supports JPMS/Jigsaw modules. The project is modularized so you can install only what you need.
• Provides a selftest package with 100+ tests to ensure compatibility with any target platform.
• Apache 2.0 licensed.

* (Tested up to Java 19; support for Java 7 was dropped in version 2.5.0).

Quick links

• Project website and Github project
• Changelog
• Getting started
• Demo code (Java source)
  • Sockets (org.newsclub.net.unix.demo)
  • RMI over Unix Sockets (org.newsclub.net.unix.demo.rmi and org.newsclub.net.unix.demo.rmi.services)
  • MySQL over Unix Sockets (org.newsclub.net.mysql.demo)
• API Javadocs
• Unix Domain Socket Reference
• TIPC documentation

Licensing

junixsocket is released under the Apache 2.0 License.

Commercial support is available through Kohlschütter Search Intelligence.

Self-test

To verify that the software works as expected on your platform, you can run the junixsocket-selftest program, which is located in the "junixsocket-dist" distribution package, and also released on GitHub.

java -jar junixsocket-selftest-VERSION-jar-with-dependencies.jar 

(with VERSION being the corresponding junixsocket version).

Maven dependency

To include the core junixsocket functionality in your project, add the following Maven dependency

NOTE Since version 2.4.0, junixsocket-core is POM-only (that's why you need to specify <type>pom</type>)

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.kohlschutter.junixsocket</groupId>
  <artifactId>junixsocket-core</artifactId>
  <version>2.5.1</version>
  <type>pom</type>
</dependency>

For more, optional packages (RMI, MySQL, Jetty, TIPC, server, etc.) see here