Develop Reference

What's the best way to release resources after java.util.Timer?

I have an AutoCloseable whose close() method is being called prematurely. The AutoCloseable is ProcessQueues below. I don't want the close() method to be called when it is currently being called. I'm considering the removal of "implements AutoCloseable" to accomplish that. But then how do I know when to call ProcessQueues.close()?
public class ProcessQueues implements AutoCloseable {
private ArrayList<MessageQueue> queueObjects = new ArrayList<MessageQueue>();
public ProcessQueues() {
queueObjects.add(new FFE_DPVALID_TO_SSP_EXCEPTION());
queueObjects.add(new FFE_DPVALID_TO_SSP_ESBEXCEPTION());
...
}
private void scheduleProcessRuns() {
try {
for (MessageQueue obj : queueObjects) {
monitorTimer.schedule(obj, new Date(), 1); // NOT THE ACTUAL ARGUMENTS
}
}
catch (Exception ex) {
// NOT THE ACTUAL EXCEPTION HANDLER
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
try (ProcessQueues pq = new ProcessQueues()) {
pq.scheduleProcessRuns();
} catch (Exception e) {
// NOT THE ACTUAL EXCEPTION HANDLER
}
}
#Override
public void close() throws Exception {
for (MessageQueue queue : queueObjects) {
queue.close();
}
}
}
I want ProcessQueues.close() to be called, but not until the task execution threads of all Timer objects terminate. As written, ProcessQueues.close() will be called as soon as the tasks are scheduled. I can easily solve that by removing "implements AutoCloseable" from the ProcessQueues class (and removing the #Override annotation). But then I have to call ProcessQueues.close() myself. How do I know when the task execution threads of all Timer objects have terminated? That's when I want to call ProcessQueues.close().
Note that MessageQueue isn't instantiated in the resource specification header of a try-with-resources block, so although MessageQueue also implements AutoCloseable, the feature isn't utilized here. I'm explicitly calling MessageQueue.close(). It is in MessageQueue.close() that I release resources. Releasing those resources prematurely causes the task execution threads to fail to complete their tasks.
I'm considering an explicit call to ProcessQueues.close() after rewriting the code to prevent automatic resource deallocation, but again I don't know how to discover the right time for that explicit call.
I considered overriding ProcessQueues.finalize(), but "Java: How to Program", Eleventh Edition advises against that. "You should never use method finalize, because it can cause many problems and there's uncertainty as to whether it will ever get called before a program terminates... Now it's considered better practice for any class that uses system resources... to provide a method that programmers can call to release resources when they're no longer needed in a program." I have such a method. It's ProcessQueues.close(). But when should I call it?

You have conflicting lifecycle issues here.
You have Timer whose lifecycle is 100% in your control. You start it, you stop it, and that's it. But you have no direct introspection in to the status of the threads being managed by the Timer. So, you can't ask it if it has anything currently running, for example.
Then you have your MessageQueue, which is invoked by the Timer. This is the lifecycle you're interested in. You want to wait for all of the MessageQueues to be "done", for assorted values of done. But, since the queue are constantly being rescheduled (given the Timer.schedule method that you're using), they're NEVER "done". They process their contents and go off and run again.
So, how is anyone to know when "done" means "done"?
Is it up to the MessageQueue? Or is it up to the ProcessQueues? Who's in command here?
Notice, nothing ever cancels the Timer. It's just runs on and on and on.
So, how can one know when MessageQueue can be closed?
If MessageQueue is the real driver here, then you should add lifecycle methods to the MessageQueue that ProcessQueues can monitor to know when to shut things down. For example, you could create a CountDownLatch set for however many MessageQueues are in your list, and then subscribe to a new lifecycle method on the MessageQueue that it calls when it's finished. The callback method can then decrement the CountDownLatch, and the ProcessQueues.close method simply waits on the latch to countdown before closing everything.
public class ProcessQueues implements AutoCloseable, MessageQueueListener {
private ArrayList<MessageQueue> queueObjects = new ArrayList<MessageQueue>();
CountDownLatch latch;
public ProcessQueues() {
queueObjects.add(new FFE_DPVALID_TO_SSP_EXCEPTION());
queueObjects.add(new FFE_DPVALID_TO_SSP_ESBEXCEPTION());
...
queueObjects.forEach((mq) -> {
mq.setListener(this);
});
latch = new CountDownLatch(queueObjects.size());
}
private void scheduleProcessRuns() {
try {
for (MessageQueue obj : queueObjects) {
monitorTimer.schedule(obj, new Date(), 1); // NOT THE ACTUAL ARGUMENTS
}
} catch (Exception ex) {
// NOT THE ACTUAL EXCEPTION HANDLER
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
try (ProcessQueues pq = new ProcessQueues()) {
pq.scheduleProcessRuns();
} catch (Exception e) {
// NOT THE ACTUAL EXCEPTION HANDLER
}
}
#Override
public void close() throws Exception {
latch.await();
for (MessageQueue queue : queueObjects) {
queue.close();
}
monitorTimer.cancel();
}
#Override
public void messageQueueDone() {
latch.countDown();
}
}
public interface MessageQueueListener {
public void messageQueueDone();
}
public class MessageQueue extends TimerTask {
MessageQueueListener listener;
public void setListener(MessageQueueListener listener) {
this.listener = listener;
}
private boolean isMessageQueueReallyDone {
...
}
public void run() {
...
if (isMessageQueueReallyDone() && listener != null) {
listener.messageQueueDone();
}
}
}
Mind, this means that your try-with-resource block will block waiting on all of the MessageQueues, if that's what you want, then you're good to go.
It also crassly assumes that your MessageQueue.run() knows when to shut down, which goes back to that "who's in control here" thing.

I could terminate the Timer, but having it run perpetually is intentional. The question is in consideration of what happens when something else terminates the Timer and the MessageQueue objects are no longer needed. It is at that point that I would like to call ProcessQueues.close().
If I were to use the Executor framework, rather than Timer, then I could use ExecutorService.awaitTermination(long timeout, TimeUnit unit)
TimerTask is a Runnable, and MessageQueue is already a TimerTask, so MessageQueue need not change.
'ExecutorService.awaitTermination(Long.MAX_VALUE, TimeUnit.DAYS)' would effectively wait forever for termination.
public static void main(String[] args) {
try (ProcessQueues pq = new ProcessQueues()) {
pq.scheduleProcessRuns();
// Don't take this literally.
ExecutorService.awaitTermination(Long.MAX_VALUE, TimeUnit.DAYS);
} catch (Exception e) {
// NOT THE ACTUAL EXCEPTION HANDLER
}
}
Of course, awaitTermination isn't a static method, so I'll have to have an ExecutorService, but you get the idea.
After termination, the AutoCloseable feature is leveraged and ProcessQueues.close() is implicitly called.
All that remains is to start the threads for perpetually repeated calls to each TimerTask, using the Executor framework. The answer to that question is ScheduledExecutorService.
I think this will work.

What happens to a thread blocking on a future which corresponding task has been discarded?

I'm using an ExecutorService to perform some computations on a thread pool :
#Override
public double predict(IModelInputData<EXTRACTER> modelInputData) throws PredictionFailureException {
try {
return threadPool.submit(() -> regressor.predict(modelInputData)).get();
} catch (InterruptedException|ExecutionException e) {
throw new PredictionFailureException("Error during prediction", e);
}
}
The executor service threadPool has been created using a bounded blocking queue and a custom policy :
private static class DiscardOldestWithWarningPolicy extends ThreadPoolExecutor.DiscardOldestPolicy {
#Override
public void rejectedExecution(Runnable r, ThreadPoolExecutor e) {
super.rejectedExecution(r, e);
LOG.warn("Discarded the oldest prediction task (too many tasks in the queue)");
}
}
I made a test to ensure this warning was actually logged, and it is, but I am quite unsure about what happens to the threads that have blocked on threadPool.submit(...).get() when the corresponding task is discarded. It looks to me like they stay blocked, but this would not make a lot of sense. The behaviour I would like to see hapenning is an exception being thrown to interrupt the thread but I have not seen any.
Am I missing something ?

Yep, it looks like the builtin DiscardOldestPolicy just drops the oldest one on the floor. The problem is that the ThreadPoolExecutor is holding a Runnable, and has no way of knowing what to do with it. You could implement your own handler which does something useful with the task (making assumptions about the type of the Runnable).
Something like:
public void rejectedExecution(Runnable r, ThreadPoolExecutor e) {
if (!e.isShutdown()) {
Runnable old = e.getQueue().poll();
if(old instanceof Future<?>) {
((Future<?>)old).cancel(true);
}
e.execute(r);
}
}

Thread methods deprecated [duplicate]

How do you kill a java.lang.Thread in Java?

See this thread by Sun on why they deprecated Thread.stop(). It goes into detail about why this was a bad method and what should be done to safely stop threads in general.
The way they recommend is to use a shared variable as a flag which asks the background thread to stop. This variable can then be set by a different object requesting the thread terminate.

Generally you don't..
You ask it to interrupt whatever it is doing using Thread.interrupt() (javadoc link)
A good explanation of why is in the javadoc here (java technote link)

In Java threads are not killed, but the stopping of a thread is done in a cooperative way. The thread is asked to terminate and the thread can then shutdown gracefully.
Often a volatile boolean field is used which the thread periodically checks and terminates when it is set to the corresponding value.
I would not use a boolean to check whether the thread should terminate. If you use volatile as a field modifier, this will work reliable, but if your code becomes more complex, for instead uses other blocking methods inside the while loop, it might happen, that your code will not terminate at all or at least takes longer as you might want.
Certain blocking library methods support interruption.
Every thread has already a boolean flag interrupted status and you should make use of it. It can be implemented like this:
public void run() {
try {
while (!interrupted()) {
// ...
}
} catch (InterruptedException consumed)
/* Allow thread to exit */
}
}
public void cancel() { interrupt(); }
Source code adapted from Java Concurrency in Practice. Since the cancel() method is public you can let another thread invoke this method as you wanted.

One way is by setting a class variable and using it as a sentinel.
Class Outer {
public static volatile flag = true;
Outer() {
new Test().start();
}
class Test extends Thread {
public void run() {
while (Outer.flag) {
//do stuff here
}
}
}
}
Set an external class variable, i.e. flag = true in the above example. Set it to false to 'kill' the thread.

I want to add several observations, based on the comments that have accumulated.
Thread.stop() will stop a thread if the security manager allows it.
Thread.stop() is dangerous. Having said that, if you are working in a JEE environment and you have no control over the code being called, it may be necessary; see Why is Thread.stop deprecated?
You should never stop stop a container worker thread. If you want to run code that tends to hang, (carefully) start a new daemon thread and monitor it, killing if necessary.
stop() creates a new ThreadDeathError error on the calling thread and then throws that error on the target thread. Therefore, the stack trace is generally worthless.
In JRE 6, stop() checks with the security manager and then calls stop1() that calls stop0(). stop0() is native code.
As of Java 13 Thread.stop() has not been removed (yet), but Thread.stop(Throwable) was removed in Java 11. (mailing list, JDK-8204243)

There is a way how you can do it. But if you had to use it, either you are a bad programmer or you are using a code written by bad programmers. So, you should think about stopping being a bad programmer or stopping using this bad code.
This solution is only for situations when THERE IS NO OTHER WAY.
Thread f = <A thread to be stopped>
Method m = Thread.class.getDeclaredMethod( "stop0" , new Class[]{Object.class} );
m.setAccessible( true );
m.invoke( f , new ThreadDeath() );

I'd vote for Thread.stop().
As for instance you have a long lasting operation (like a network request).
Supposedly you are waiting for a response, but it can take time and the user navigated to other UI.
This waiting thread is now a) useless b) potential problem because when he will get result, it's completely useless and he will trigger callbacks that can lead to number of errors.
All of that and he can do response processing that could be CPU intense. And you, as a developer, cannot even stop it, because you can't throw if (Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) lines in all code.
So the inability to forcefully stop a thread it weird.

The question is rather vague. If you meant “how do I write a program so that a thread stops running when I want it to”, then various other responses should be helpful. But if you meant “I have an emergency with a server I cannot restart right now and I just need a particular thread to die, come what may”, then you need an intervention tool to match monitoring tools like jstack.
For this purpose I created jkillthread. See its instructions for usage.

There is of course the case where you are running some kind of not-completely-trusted code. (I personally have this by allowing uploaded scripts to execute in my Java environment. Yes, there are security alarm bell ringing everywhere, but it's part of the application.) In this unfortunate instance you first of all are merely being hopeful by asking script writers to respect some kind of boolean run/don't-run signal. Your only decent fail safe is to call the stop method on the thread if, say, it runs longer than some timeout.
But, this is just "decent", and not absolute, because the code could catch the ThreadDeath error (or whatever exception you explicitly throw), and not rethrow it like a gentlemanly thread is supposed to do. So, the bottom line is AFAIA there is no absolute fail safe.

'Killing a thread' is not the right phrase to use. Here is one way we can implement graceful completion/exit of the thread on will:
Runnable which I used:
class TaskThread implements Runnable {
boolean shouldStop;
public TaskThread(boolean shouldStop) {
this.shouldStop = shouldStop;
}
#Override
public void run() {
System.out.println("Thread has started");
while (!shouldStop) {
// do something
}
System.out.println("Thread has ended");
}
public void stop() {
shouldStop = true;
}
}
The triggering class:
public class ThreadStop {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Start");
// Start the thread
TaskThread task = new TaskThread(false);
Thread t = new Thread(task);
t.start();
// Stop the thread
task.stop();
System.out.println("End");
}
}

There is no way to gracefully kill a thread.
You can try to interrupt the thread, one commons strategy is to use a poison pill to message the thread to stop itself
public class CancelSupport {
public static class CommandExecutor implements Runnable {
private BlockingQueue<String> queue;
public static final String POISON_PILL = “stopnow”;
public CommandExecutor(BlockingQueue<String> queue) {
this.queue=queue;
}
#Override
public void run() {
boolean stop=false;
while(!stop) {
try {
String command=queue.take();
if(POISON_PILL.equals(command)) {
stop=true;
} else {
// do command
System.out.println(command);
}
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
stop=true;
}
}
System.out.println(“Stopping execution”);
}
}
}
BlockingQueue<String> queue=new LinkedBlockingQueue<String>();
Thread t=new Thread(new CommandExecutor(queue));
queue.put(“hello”);
queue.put(“world”);
t.start();
Thread.sleep(1000);
queue.put(“stopnow”);
http://anandsekar.github.io/cancel-support-for-threads/

Generally you don't kill, stop, or interrupt a thread (or check wheter it is interrupted()), but let it terminate naturally.
It is simple. You can use any loop together with (volatile) boolean variable inside run() method to control thread's activity. You can also return from active thread to the main thread to stop it.
This way you gracefully kill a thread :) .

Attempts of abrupt thread termination are well-known bad programming practice and evidence of poor application design. All threads in the multithreaded application explicitly and implicitly share the same process state and forced to cooperate with each other to keep it consistent, otherwise your application will be prone to the bugs which will be really hard to diagnose. So, it is a responsibility of developer to provide an assurance of such consistency via careful and clear application design.
There are two main right solutions for the controlled threads terminations:
Use of the shared volatile flag
Use of the pair of Thread.interrupt() and Thread.interrupted() methods.
Good and detailed explanation of the issues related to the abrupt threads termination as well as examples of wrong and right solutions for the controlled threads termination can be found here:
https://www.securecoding.cert.org/confluence/display/java/THI05-J.+Do+not+use+Thread.stop%28%29+to+terminate+threads

Here are a couple of good reads on the subject:
What Do You Do With InterruptedException?
Shutting down threads cleanly

I didn't get the interrupt to work in Android, so I used this method, works perfectly:
boolean shouldCheckUpdates = true;
private void startupCheckForUpdatesEveryFewSeconds() {
Thread t = new Thread(new CheckUpdates());
t.start();
}
private class CheckUpdates implements Runnable{
public void run() {
while (shouldCheckUpdates){
//Thread sleep 3 seconds
System.out.println("Do your thing here");
}
}
}
public void stop(){
shouldCheckUpdates = false;
}

Thread.stop is deprecated so how do we stop a thread in java ?
Always use interrupt method and future to request cancellation
When the task responds to interrupt signal, for example, blocking queue take method.
Callable < String > callable = new Callable < String > () {
#Override
public String call() throws Exception {
String result = "";
try {
//assume below take method is blocked as no work is produced.
result = queue.take();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
}
return result;
}
};
Future future = executor.submit(callable);
try {
String result = future.get(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
} catch (TimeoutException e) {
logger.error("Thread timedout!");
return "";
} finally {
//this will call interrupt on queue which will abort the operation.
//if it completes before time out, it has no side effects
future.cancel(true);
}
When the task does not respond to interrupt signal.Suppose the task performs socket I/O which does not respond to interrupt signal and thus using above approach will not abort the task, future would time out but the cancel in finally block will have no effect, thread will keep on listening to socket. We can close the socket or call close method on connection if implemented by pool.
public interface CustomCallable < T > extends Callable < T > {
void cancel();
RunnableFuture < T > newTask();
}
public class CustomExecutorPool extends ThreadPoolExecutor {
protected < T > RunnableFuture < T > newTaskFor(Callable < T > callable) {
if (callable instanceof CancellableTask)
return ((CancellableTask < T > ) callable).newTask();
else
return super.newTaskFor(callable);
}
}
public abstract class UnblockingIOTask < T > implements CustomCallable < T > {
public synchronized void cancel() {
try {
obj.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
logger.error("io exception", e);
}
}
public RunnableFuture < T > newTask() {
return new FutureTask < T > (this) {
public boolean cancel(boolean mayInterruptIfRunning) {
try {
this.cancel();
} finally {
return super.cancel(mayInterruptIfRunning);
}
}
};
}
}

After 15+ years of developing in Java there is one thing I want to say to the world.
Deprecating Thread.stop() and all the holy battle against its use is just another bad habit or design flaw unfortunately became a reality... (eg. want to talk about the Serializable interface?)
The battle is focusing on the fact that killing a thread can leave an object into an inconsistent state. And so? Welcome to multithread programming. You are a programmer, and you need to know what you are doing, and yes.. killing a thread can leave an object in inconsistent state. If you are worried about it use a flag and let the thread quit gracefully; but there are TONS of times where there is no reason to be worried.
But no.. if you type thread.stop() you're likely to be killed by all the people who looks/comments/uses your code. So you have to use a flag, call interrupt(), place if(!flag) all around your code because you're not looping at all, and finally pray that the 3rd-party library you're using to do your external call is written correctly and doesn't handle the InterruptException improperly.

Producer-consumer inter-thread communication

having trouble with inter-thread communication and "solved" it by using "dummy messages" all over the place. Is this a bad idea? What are possible solutions?
Example Problem i have.
main thread starts a thread for processing and inserting records into database.
main thread reads a possibly huge file and puts one record (object) after another into a blockingqueue. processing thread reads from queue and does work.
How do I tell "processing thread" to stop?
Queue can be empty but work is not done and the main thread does not now either when processing thread has finished work and can't interrupt it.
So processing thread does
while (queue.size() > 0 || !Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) {
MyObject object= queue.poll(100, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
if (object != null) {
String data = object.getData();
if (data.equals("END")) {
break;
}
// do work
}
}
// clean-up
synchronized queue) {
queue.notifyAll();
}
return;
and main thread
// ...start processing thread...
while(reader.hasNext(){
// ...read whole file and put data in queue...
}
MyObject dummy = new MyObject();
dummy.setData("END");
queue.put(dummy);
//Note: empty queue here means work is done
while (queue.size() > 0) {
synchronized (queue) {
queue.wait(500); // over-cautios locking prevention i guess
}
}
Note that insertion must be in same transaction and transaction can't be handled
by main thread.
What would be a better way of doing this?
(I'm learning and don't want to start "doing it the wrong way")

These dummy message is valid. It is called "poison". Something that the producer sends to the consumer to make it stop.
Other possibility is to call Thread.interrupt() somewhere in the main thread and catch and handle the InterruptedException accordingly, in the worker thread.

"solved" it by using "dummy messages" all over the place. Is this a
bad idea? What are possible solutions?
It's not a bad idea, it's called "Poison Pills" and is a reasonable way to stop a thread-based service.
But it only works when the number of producers and consumers is known.
In code you posted, there are two threads, one is "main thread", which produces data, the other is "processing thread", which consumes data, the "Poison Pills" works well for this circumstance.
But to imagine, if you also have other producers, how does consumer know when to stop (only when all producers send "Poison Pills"), you need to know exactly the number of all the producers, and to check the number of "Poison Pills" in consumer, if it equals to the number of producers, which means all producers stopped working, then consumer stops.
In "main thread", you need to catch the InterruptedException, since if not, "main thread" might not able to set the "Poison Pill". You can do it like below,
...
try {
// do normal processing
} catch (InterruptedException e) { /* fall through */ }
finally {
MyObject dummy = new MyObject();
dummy.setData("END");
...
}
...
Also, you can try to use the ExecutorService to solve all your problem.
(It works when you just need to do some works and then stop when all are finished)
void doWorks(Set<String> works, long timeout, TimeUnit unit)
throws InterruptedException {
ExecutorService exec = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
try {
for (final String work : works)
exec.execute(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
...
}
});
} finally {
exec.shutdown();
exec.awaitTermination(timeout, unit);
}
}
I'm learning and don't want to start "doing it the wrong way"
You might need to read the Book: Java Concurrency in Practice. Trust me, it's the best.

What you could do (which I did in a recent project) is to wrap the queue and then add a 'isOpen()'method.
class ClosableQ<T> {
boolean isOpen = true;
private LinkedBlockingQueue<T> lbq = new LinkedBlockingQueue<T>();
public void put(T someObject) {
if (isOpen) {
lbq.put(someObject);
}
}
public T get() {
if (isOpen) {
return lbq.get(0);
}
}
public boolean isOpen() {
return isOpen;
}
public void open() {
isOpen = true;
}
public void close() {
isOpen = false;
}
}
So your writer thread becomes something like :
while (reader.hasNext() ) {
// read the file and put it into the queue
dataQ.put(someObject);
}
// now we're done
dataQ.close();
and the reader thread:
while (dataQ.isOpen) {
someObject = dataQ.get();
}
You could of course extend the list instead but that gives the user a level of access you might not want. And you need to add some concurrency thingies to this code, like AtomicBoolean.

How can i catch another threads exception

Code:
public void doSomethingOrThrowUncheckedException()
{
Thread worker = new Thread(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
try {
myObject.doSomething()
} catch(CheckedException e) {
new UncheckedException ();
}
}
});
worker.start();
}
Explanation
I want to perform some work in another thread that can throw a checked exception.
I cannot wait for this work to finish and I want the method caller to know if something went wrong with this work since the new thread is not able to handle the exception properly.
Is there a mechanism I can use?

Can you create a Observable outside of the thread? If something goes wrong, the thread sets a value to change that Observable. The main code is an Observer and reacts to the change when the property listener is called.

It depends on what you mean by the caller knowing that something went wrong. A couple of options come to mind immediately.
The worker thread can set an error flag. The disadvantage is that the calling thread will need to check the flag to know that something went wrong. (There can also be a flag for success; as long as neither is set, the calling thread knows that the worker is still working.
The worker thread can call an error method. The disadvantage is that the call will take place in the worker thread. On the other hand, this provides a place to take positive action. The Observer pattern might be useful here (although I think Java's implementation is terrible).

If, when the worker thread completes successfully it communicates the success to Foo, or produces an object that Foo consumes, then expand that mechanism to allow it to pass the checked exception along to Foo, rather than passing the exception to the method calling thread.
public void doSomething()
{
Thread worker = new Thread(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
try {
result = myObject.doSomething();
foo.processResult(result);
} catch(CheckedException e) {
foo.processException(e);
}
}
});
worker.start();
}
public void doSomething()
{
Thread worker = new Thread(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
try {
result = myObject.doSomething();
resultQueue.add(result);
} catch(CheckedException e) {
resultQueue.add(e);
}
}
});
worker.start();
}
If doSomething() doesn't interact with anything when it successfully completes then you'll need to follow one of the other answers.

You may also want to have a look at uncaughtExceptionhandler.