Hello,

May be i am not able to express my doubt properly in this question but still i will try. Basically i created a simple socket based chat program and everything works fine. But i think i have made many patches in it from the design point of view.

I have used ObjectInputStream and ObjectOutputStreams in my program. The question i want to ask is how do i identify the different type of data that i send across the network? say if it is simple String type object i directly add to List<String> chatMessages. Now if want to ban certain users i created an another class :-

public class User{
    private String name;
    private String id;
    //getters and setters
}

This User class means no importance to me till now but i only created it to properly identify the action. Thus if i receive an instanceOf User i can be sure that some user is to be banned. That way i dont have to hardcode strings. I mean first i thought of sending something like "Banned User :" + userName and then i used to check if string startsWith "Banned User :" then i take some action :p. I've created a User class but it means no importance to me in my program.

I want to know whether directly sending strings is good way or create a class for every action that is good. If i am not clear please let me know. If i have hundreds of action do i have to create hundreds of classes so i can check via instanceOf? Say now if i plan to create a BUZZ like facility that is available in yahoo messenger. Should i again create an another class named BUZZ? so it can be identified easily?