junixsocket

junixsocket is a Java/JNI library that allows the use of Unix Domain Sockets (AF_UNIX sockets) from Java.

Why it's cool

• junixsocket is the most complete implementation of Unix Domain Sockets for the Java ecosystem.
• Comes with pre-built native libraries for several operating systems and platforms, including macOS, Linux, Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD.
• Supports all Java versions since Java 7*.
• 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 socket (using NanoHTTPD).
• Supports JPMS/Jigsaw modules. 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 17; Java 7 support is limited to core functionality, no RMI).

Quick links

• Project website

• 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

  • The core (common) API
  • The RMI-over-Unix-Socket API

• Unix Domain Socket Reference

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 selftest program, which is located in the "junixsocket-dist" distribution package:

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

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.kohlschutter.junixsocket</groupId>
  <artifactId>junixsocket-core</artifactId>
  <version>2.4.1</version>
  <type>pom</type>
</dependency>

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