[mono-android] Bluetooth stream problems

[Jonathan Pryor]

On Nov 3, 2011, at 1:01 AM, Igor Russkih wrote:
> As I see Java's InputStream from BluetoothSocket is indirectly mapped into System.IO.Stream
> 
> How then I can use java's is.available() to detect if there is any data in the stream? There is no direct mapping for such a logic in the System.IO.Stream.

We're wondering why you need polling access to the stream. InputStream.available() is documented as not being very useful:

	http://developer.android.com/reference/java/io/InputStream.html#available()

	"Note that this method provides such a weak guarantee that it is not very useful in practice."

In particular, is there a reason you don't want to use Stream.BeginRead() or some other async mechanism? Why do you need polling?

If there's a good need for polling, we're considering providing a `bool DataAvailable(this Stream stream)` extension method (thus translating the dubious `int` InputStream.available() return value into a `bool`, and this mechanism could also check for NetworkStream  and return NetworkStream.DataAvailable), but before we provide this we'd like to know how useful it actually is.

 - Jon