Read and Parse US States with Sockets

Sockets, like all other streams, can be read and parsed using stream operations.

Open a connection to a server that contains textual data.

In[1]:=

socket = SocketConnect["http://exampledata.wolfram.com"]

Out[1]=

Write a line containing a GET request for a text file containing all the US states.

In[2]:=

WriteLine[socket, "GET /50states.txt HTTP/1.0 \n"]

Read the first line of the response.

In[3]:=

ReadLine[socket]

Out[3]=

Read all remaining lines.

In[4]:=

output = ReadString[socket];

Inspect the middle of the string to see the start of a newline-delimited list of states.

In[5]:=

StringTake[output, {277, 347}]

Out[5]=

Use SemanticImportString to parse the output, and delete any elements that failed to parse.

In[6]:=

states = DeleteMissing[SemanticImportString[output]]

Out[6]=

Test that indeed all the states were located.

In[7]:=

Equal[Length[states], Length[EntityList[ EntityClass["AdministrativeDivision", "USStatesAllStates"]]]]

Out[7]=

Close the stream.

In[8]:=

Close[socket]