I want to make a chat which will be programed in java. one computer will host the server and the other one will initiate the socket [tcp port]. now from what I read there should be a loop that will constantly read the socket which means it will make the code stuck. I have a button that is 'actionperformed' on mouse release, I want to know if it will work along with the loops that constantly reads the socket so that it will also send the infromation I wrote.

If I must thread it, I want to know if the run() method must be void because if I thread it it will mean creating a new class, and the whole GUI is one big class which includes a text area, and it's private. also how can I extract the information from the socket directly to the text area? lets say the textarea variable is called "chatOutput".

thx :)