Check Packet Size of TCP Data Before Reading Next Byte in Stream

[quddusaliquddus]

Hi :D,
I am sending data to server via TCP IP Connection. I am using a continuous loop at the server end - that accepts new clients and while streams can be read, it reads data stream.

The data is sent from the client with 2 leading bytes of data that represent the size of the packet of data sent and type of data.

My question is: how do I retrieve the size of the data packet and then check that this amount of data has been retrieved?

Thanks :)

Q

PS:

Client:

        Dim Enc As Encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("utf-32")
 
        Dim UserNameText As String = UserName.Text
 
        Dim UserNameTextLength = Enc.GetByteCount(UserNameText)
 
        Dim UserNameByte As Byte() = New Byte(UserNameTextLength + 1) {}
        Enc.GetBytes(UserNameText, 0, UserNameText.Length, UserNameByte, 2)
 
        UserNameByte(0) = 99 'Packet Size
 
        UserNameByte(1) = 88 'Packet Type
 
        Dim Client As New TcpClient("192.168.1.65", 65535)
 
        Dim Stream As NetworkStream = Client.GetStream
 
        Dim Chars As Char() = Enc.GetChars(UserNameByte)
 
        MessageBox.Show(Chars)
 
        Stream.Write(UserNameByte, 0, UserNameByte.Length)
 

Server: I would like to retrieve the packet size and then retrieve that size of data.

        While Listener.Pending = False
            Client = Listener.AcceptTcpClient()
            Dim Stream As NetworkStream = Client.GetStream()
 
            While Stream.CanRead
 
                Dim UserNameByte(Client.ReceiveBufferSize) As Byte
                Stream.Read(UserNameByte, 0, CInt(Client.ReceiveBufferSize))
 
                Dim UserNameStringByte(Client.ReceiveBufferSize - 2) As Byte
 
                Array.Copy(UserNameByte, 2, UserNameStringByte, 0, UserNameByte.Length - 2)
 
                Dim Enc As Encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("utf-32")
                Dim Chars As Char() = Enc.GetChars(UserNameStringByte)
 
                MsgBox(Chars)
 
            End While
 
        End While
 

[Plater]

Assuming your server is at the start of waiting for a message.
Read in 2 bytes. Convert that into the correct number. Check to see if that many bytes is available to read. Based on that result, either read or continue to wait?