Develop Reference

Java Stream vs Flux fromIterable

I have a list of usernames and want to fetch user details from the remote service without blocking the main thread. I'm using Spring's reactive client WebClient. For the response, I get Mono then subscribe it and print the result.
private Mono<User> getUser(String username) {
return webClient
.get()
.uri(uri + "/users/" + username)
.retrieve()
.bodyToMono(User.class)
.doOnError(e ->
logger.error("Error on retrieveing a user details {}", username));
}
I have implemented the task in two ways:
Using Java stream
usernameList.stream()
.map(this::getUser)
.forEach(mono ->
mono.subscribe(System.out::println));
Using Flux.fromIterable:
Flux.fromIterable(usernameList)
.map(this::getUser)
.subscribe(mono ->
mono.subscribe(System.out::println));
It seems the main thread is not blocked in both ways.
What is the difference between Java Stream and Flux.fromIterable in this situation? If both are doing the same thing, which one is recommended to use?

There are not huge differences between both variants. The Flux.fromIterable variant might give your more options and control about concurrency/retries, etc - but not really in this case because calling subscribe here defeats the purpose.
Your question is missing some background about the type of application you're building and in which context these calls are made. If you're building a web application and this is called during request processing, or a batch application - opinions might vary.
In general, I think applications should stay away from calling subscribe because it disconnects the processing of that pipeline from the rest of the application: if an exception happens, you might not be able to report it because the resource to use to send that error message might be gone at that point. Or maybe the application is shutting down and you have no way to make it wait the completion of that task.
If you're building an application that wants to kick off some work and that its result is not useful to the current operation (i.e. it doesn't matter if that work completes or not during the lifetime of the current operation), then subscribe might be an option.
In that case, I'd try and group all operations in a single Mono<Void> operation and then trigger that work:
Mono<Void> logUsers = Flux.fromIterable(userNameList)
.map(name -> getUser(name))
.doOnNext(user -> System.out.println(user)) // assuming this is non I/O work
.then();
logUsers.subscribe(...);
If you're concerned about consuming server threads in a web application, then it's really different - you might want to get the result of that operation to write something to the HTTP response. By calling subscribe, both tasks are now disconnected and the HTTP response might be long gone by the time that work is done (and you'll get an error while writing to the response).
In that case, you should chain the operations with Reactor operators.

Async method followed by a parallelly executed method in Java 8

After spending the day of learning about the java Concurrency API, I still dont quite get how could I create the following functionality with the help of CompletableFuture and ExecutorService classes:
When I get a request on my REST endpoint I need to:
Start an asynchronous task (includes DB query, filtering, etc.), which will give me a list of String URLs at the end
In the meanwhile, responde back to the REST caller with HTTP OK, that the request was received, I'm working on it
When the asynchronous task is finished, I need to send HTTP requests (with the payload, the REST caller gave me) to the URLs I got from the job. At most the number of URLs would be around a 100, so I need these to happen in parallel.
Ideally I have some syncronized counter which counts how many of the http requests were a success/fail, and I can send this information back to the REST caller (the URL I need to send it back to is provided inside the request payload).
I have the building blocks (methods like: getMatchingObjectsFromDB(callerPayload), getURLs(resultOfgetMachingObjects), sendHttpRequest(Url, methodType), etc...) written for these already, I just cant quite figure out how to tie step 1 and step 3 together. I would use CompletableFuture.supplyAsync() for step 1, then I would need the CompletableFuture.thenComponse method to start step 3, but it's not clear to me how parallelism can be done with this API. It is rather intuitive with ExecutorService executor = Executors.newWorkStealingPool(); though, which creates a thread pool based on how much processing power is available and the tasks can be submitted via the invokeAll() method.
How can I use CompletableFutureand ExecutorService together? Or how can I guarantee parallel execution of a list of tasks with CompletableFuture? Demonstrating code snippet would be much appreciated. Thanks.

You should use join() to wait for all thread finish.
Create Map<String, Boolean> result to store your request result.
In your controller:
public void yourControllerMethod() {
CompletableFuture.runAsync(() -> yourServiceMethod());
}
In your service:
// Execute your logic to get List<String> urls
List<CompletableFuture> futures = urls.stream().map(v ->
CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(url -> requestUrl(url))
.thenAcceptAsync(requestResult -> result.put(url, true or false))
).collect(toList()); // You have list of completeable future here
Then use .join() to wait for all thread (Remember that your service are executed in its own thread already)
CompletableFuture.allOf(futures).join();
Then you can determine which one success/fail by accessing result map
Edit
Please post your proceduce code so that other may understand you also.
I've read your code and here are the needed modification:
When this for loop was not commented out, the receiver webserver got
the same request twice,
I dont understand the purpose of this for loop.
Sorry in my previous answer, I did not clean it up. That's just a temporary idea on my head that I forgot to remove at the end :D
Just remove it from your code
// allOf() only accepts arrays, so the List needed to be converted
/* The code never gets over this part (I know allOf() is a blocking call), even long after when the receiver got the HTTP request
with the correct payload. I'm not sure yet where exactly the code gets stuck */
Your map should be a ConcurrentHashMap because you're modifying it concurrently later.
Map<String, Boolean> result = new ConcurrentHashMap<>();
If your code still does not work as expected, I suggest to remove the parallelStream() part.
CompletableFuture and parallelStream use common forkjoin pool. I think the pool is exhausted.
And you should create your own pool for your CompletableFuture:
Executor pool = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(10);
And execute your request using that pool:
CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(YOURTASK, pool).thenAcceptAsync(Yourtask, pool)

For the sake of completion here is the relevant parts of the code, after clean-up and testing (thanks to Mạnh Quyết Nguyễn):
Rest controller class:
#POST
#Path("publish")
public Response publishEvent(PublishEvent eventPublished) {
/*
Payload verification, etc.
*/
//First send the event to the right subscribers, then send the resulting hashmap<String url, Boolean subscriberGotTheRequest> back to the publisher
CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(() -> EventHandlerService.propagateEvent(eventPublished)).thenAccept(map -> {
if (eventPublished.getDeliveryCompleteUri() != null) {
String callbackUrl = Utility
.getUri(eventPublished.getSource().getAddress(), eventPublished.getSource().getPort(), eventPublished.getDeliveryCompleteUri(), isSecure,
false);
try {
Utility.sendRequest(callbackUrl, "POST", map);
} catch (RuntimeException e) {
log.error("Callback after event publishing failed at: " + callbackUrl);
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
});
//return OK while the event publishing happens in async
return Response.status(Status.OK).build();
}
Service class:
private static List<EventFilter> getMatchingEventFilters(PublishEvent pe) {
//query the database, filter the results based on the method argument
}
private static boolean sendRequest(String url, Event event) {
//send the HTTP request to the given URL, with the given Event payload, return true if the response is positive (status code starts with 2), false otherwise
}
static Map<String, Boolean> propagateEvent(PublishEvent eventPublished) {
// Get the event relevant filters from the DB
List<EventFilter> filters = getMatchingEventFilters(eventPublished);
// Create the URLs from the filters
List<String> urls = new ArrayList<>();
for (EventFilter filter : filters) {
String url;
try {
boolean isSecure = filter.getConsumer().getAuthenticationInfo() != null;
url = Utility.getUri(filter.getConsumer().getAddress(), filter.getPort(), filter.getNotifyUri(), isSecure, false);
} catch (ArrowheadException | NullPointerException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
continue;
}
urls.add(url);
}
Map<String, Boolean> result = new ConcurrentHashMap<>();
Stream<CompletableFuture> stream = urls.stream().map(url -> CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(() -> sendRequest(url, eventPublished.getEvent()))
.thenAcceptAsync(published -> result.put(url, published)));
CompletableFuture.allOf(stream.toArray(CompletableFuture[]::new)).join();
log.info("Event published to " + urls.size() + " subscribers.");
return result;
}
Debugging this was a bit harder than usual, sometimes the code just magically stopped. To fix this, I only put code parts into the async task which was absolutely necessary, and I made sure the code in the task was using thread-safe stuff. Also I was a dumb-dumb at first, and my methods inside the EventHandlerService.class used the synchronized keyword, which resulted in the CompletableFuture inside the Service class method not executing, since it uses a thread pool by default.
A piece of logic marked with synchronized becomes a synchronized block, allowing only one thread to execute at any given time.

Method rxExecuteBlocking consuming all results - ssh client

I'm trying to do really simple SSH client with Vert.x. As I don't have non-blocking SSH library under the hood, I have to handle everything in rxExecuteBlocking. It's working great when I'm running all logic in one big block of code as follows:
public Single<String> exec() {
return vertx.rxExecuteBlocking(f -> {
String result = "";
// connect()
// exec()
// close()
f.complete(result);
}, false);
}
// hostnames :: Observalbe<String>
hostnames()
.filter()
.flatMapSingle(this::exec)
.moreCalls()
.subscribe(); // OK
I'd rather to have connect(), exec(), close() separeted and call like:
hostnames()
.filter()
.flatMapSingle(this::connect)
.moreCalls()
.flatMapSingle(this::exec)
.moreCalls()
.flatMapSingle(this::close)
.subscribe();
But when running more than one piece of blocking code
public Single<Connection> connect() {
return vertx.rxExecuteBlocking(f -> {
// connect
}, false);
}
public Single<Connection> exec() {
return vertx.rxExecuteBlocking(f -> {
// exec
}, false);
}
the chain stops at flatMapSingle(this::connect), consume all results from filter() first (make all connections) and then continue in chain. This behavior consumes pretty much resources as all connections are in memory (this behavior reminds me reduce() or collect())
The desired result will be not stopping in chain and continue, release resources and do this for every event.
Is there any way to do this?
Thanks in advance.

I would suggest to try to use overloaded flatMap, which takes as an argument the maximum number of concurrently subscribed observables at the particular pipeline stage. Provided there are 20 threads in worker thread pool by default, you could give a fraction of the pool to each of flatMap calls, e.g. 5 to each.
hostnames()
// ...some filtering
.flatMap(hostname -> this.connect(hostname).toObservable(), 5)
// ...more operators
.flatMap(connection -> this.exec(connection).toObservable(), 5)
// ...more operators
.flatMap(connection -> this.close(connection).toObservable(), 5)
.subscribe();
This will ensure that not the whole thread pool is used at the same moment.
Some tweaks to concurrent load may be needed. For example, less concurrently subscribed observables for connect and more for exec if connect is faster than exec. Thus, results of connect are not stacked in a buffer before exec.

Vert.x Event loop - How is this asynchronous?

I'm playing around with Vert.x and quite new to the servers based on event loop as opposed to the thread/connection model.
public void start(Future<Void> fut) {
vertx
.createHttpServer()
.requestHandler(r -> {
LocalDateTime start = LocalDateTime.now();
System.out.println("Request received - "+start.format(DateTimeFormatter.ISO_DATE_TIME));
final MyModel model = new MyModel();
try {
for(int i=0;i<10000000;i++){
//some simple operation
}
model.data = start.format(DateTimeFormatter.ISO_DATE_TIME) +" - "+LocalDateTime.now().format(DateTimeFormatter.ISO_DATE_TIME);
} catch (Exception e1) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e1.printStackTrace();
}
r.response().end(
new Gson().toJson(model)
);
})
.listen(4568, result -> {
if (result.succeeded()) {
fut.complete();
} else {
fut.fail(result.cause());
}
});
System.out.println("Server started ..");
}
I'm just trying to simulate a long running request handler to understand how this model works.
What I've observed is the so called event loop is blocked until my first request completes. Whatever little time it takes, subsequent request is not acted upon until the previous one completes.
Obviously I'm missing a piece here and that's the question that I have here.
Edited based on the answers so far:
Isn't accepting all requests considered to be asynchronous? If a new
connection can only be accepted when the previous one is cleared
off, how is it async?
Assume a typical request takes anywhere between 100 ms to 1 sec (based on the kind and nature of the request). So it means, the
event loop can't accept a new connection until the previous request
finishes(even if its winds up in a second). And If I as a programmer
have to think through all these and push such request handlers to a
worker thread , then how does it differ from a thread/connection
model?
I'm just trying to understand how is this model better from a traditional thread/conn server models? Assume there is no I/O op or
all the I/O op are handled asynchronously? How does it even solve
c10k problem, when it can't start all concurrent requests parallely and have to wait till the previous one terminates?
Even if I decide to push all these operations to a worker thread(pooled), then I'm back to the same problem isn't it? Context switching between threads?
Edits and topping this question for a bounty
Do not completely understand how this model is claimed to asynchronous.
Vert.x has an async JDBC client (Asyncronous is the keyword) which I tried to adapt with RXJava.
Here is a code sample (Relevant portions)
server.requestStream().toObservable().subscribe(req -> {
LocalDateTime start = LocalDateTime.now();
System.out.println("Request for " + req.absoluteURI() +" received - " +start.format(DateTimeFormatter.ISO_DATE_TIME));
jdbc.getConnectionObservable().subscribe(
conn -> {
// Now chain some statements using flatmap composition
Observable<ResultSet> resa = conn.queryObservable("SELECT * FROM CALL_OPTION WHERE UNDERLYING='NIFTY'");
// Subscribe to the final result
resa.subscribe(resultSet -> {
req.response().end(resultSet.getRows().toString());
System.out.println("Request for " + req.absoluteURI() +" Ended - " +LocalDateTime.now().format(DateTimeFormatter.ISO_DATE_TIME));
}, err -> {
System.out.println("Database problem");
err.printStackTrace();
});
},
// Could not connect
err -> {
err.printStackTrace();
}
);
});
server.listen(4568);
The select query there takes 3 seconds approx to return the complete table dump.
When I fire concurrent requests(tried with just 2), I see that the second request completely waits for the first one to complete.
If the JDBC select is asynchronous, Isn't it a fair expectation to have the framework handle the second connection while it waits for the select query to return anything.?

Vert.x event loop is, in fact, a classical event loop existing on many platforms. And of course, most explanations and docs could be found for Node.js, as it's the most popular framework based on this architecture pattern. Take a look at one more or less good explanation of mechanics under Node.js event loop. Vert.x tutorial has fine explanation between "Don’t call us, we’ll call you" and "Verticles" too.
Edit for your updates:
First of all, when you are working with an event loop, the main thread should work very quickly for all requests. You shouldn't do any long job in this loop. And of course, you shouldn't wait for a response to your call to the database.
- Schedule a call asynchronously
- Assign a callback (handler) to result
- Callback will be executed in the worker thread, not event loop thread. This callback, for example, will return a response to the socket.
So, your operations in the event loop should just schedule all asynchronous operations with callbacks and go to the next request without awaiting any results.
Assume a typical request takes anywhere between 100 ms to 1 sec (based on the kind and nature of the request).
In that case, your request has some computation expensive parts or access to IO - your code in the event loop shouldn't wait for the result of these operations.
I'm just trying to understand how is this model better from a traditional thread/conn server models? Assume there is no I/O op or all the I/O op are handled asynchronously?
When you have too many concurrent requests and a traditional programming model, you will make thread per each request. What this thread will do? They will be mostly waiting for IO operations (for example, result from database). It's a waste of resources. In our event loop model, you have one main thread that schedule operations and preallocated amount of worker threads for long tasks. + None of these workers actually wait for the response, they just can execute another code while waiting for IO result (it can be implemented as callbacks or periodical checking status of IO jobs currently in progress). I would recommend you go through Java NIO and Java NIO 2 to understand how this async IO can be actually implemented inside the framework. Green threads is a very related concept too, that would be good to understand. Green threads and coroutines are a type of shadowed event loop, that trying to achieve the same thing - fewer threads because we can reuse system thread while green thread waiting for something.
How does it even solve c10k problem, when it can't start all concurrent requests parallel and have to wait till the previous one terminates?
For sure we don't wait in the main thread for sending the response for the previous request. Get request, schedule long/IO tasks execution, next request.
Even if I decide to push all these operations to a worker thread(pooled), then I'm back to the same problem isn't it? Context switching between threads?
If you make everything right - no. Even more, you will get good data locality and execution flow prediction. One CPU core will execute your short event loop and schedule async work without context switching and nothing more. Other cores make a call to the database and return response and only this. Switching between callbacks or checking different channels for IO status doesn't actually require any system thread's context switching - it's actually working in one worker thread. So, we have one worker thread per core and this one system thread await/checks results availability from multiple connections to database for example. Revisit Java NIO concept to understand how it can work this way. (Classical example for NIO - proxy-server that can accept many parallel connections (thousands), proxy requests to some other remote servers, listen to responses and send responses back to clients and all of this using one or two threads)
About your code, I made a sample project for you to demonstrate that everything works as expected:
public class MyFirstVerticle extends AbstractVerticle {
#Override
public void start(Future<Void> fut) {
JDBCClient client = JDBCClient.createShared(vertx, new JsonObject()
.put("url", "jdbc:hsqldb:mem:test?shutdown=true")
.put("driver_class", "org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver")
.put("max_pool_size", 30));
client.getConnection(conn -> {
if (conn.failed()) {throw new RuntimeException(conn.cause());}
final SQLConnection connection = conn.result();
// create a table
connection.execute("create table test(id int primary key, name varchar(255))", create -> {
if (create.failed()) {throw new RuntimeException(create.cause());}
});
});
vertx
.createHttpServer()
.requestHandler(r -> {
int requestId = new Random().nextInt();
System.out.println("Request " + requestId + " received");
client.getConnection(conn -> {
if (conn.failed()) {throw new RuntimeException(conn.cause());}
final SQLConnection connection = conn.result();
connection.execute("insert into test values ('" + requestId + "', 'World')", insert -> {
// query some data with arguments
connection
.queryWithParams("select * from test where id = ?", new JsonArray().add(requestId), rs -> {
connection.close(done -> {if (done.failed()) {throw new RuntimeException(done.cause());}});
System.out.println("Result " + requestId + " returned");
r.response().end("Hello");
});
});
});
})
.listen(8080, result -> {
if (result.succeeded()) {
fut.complete();
} else {
fut.fail(result.cause());
}
});
}
}
#RunWith(VertxUnitRunner.class)
public class MyFirstVerticleTest {
private Vertx vertx;
#Before
public void setUp(TestContext context) {
vertx = Vertx.vertx();
vertx.deployVerticle(MyFirstVerticle.class.getName(),
context.asyncAssertSuccess());
}
#After
public void tearDown(TestContext context) {
vertx.close(context.asyncAssertSuccess());
}
#Test
public void testMyApplication(TestContext context) {
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
final Async async = context.async();
vertx.createHttpClient().getNow(8080, "localhost", "/",
response -> response.handler(body -> {
context.assertTrue(body.toString().contains("Hello"));
async.complete();
})
);
}
}
}
Output:
Request 1412761034 received
Request -1781489277 received
Request 1008255692 received
Request -853002509 received
Request -919489429 received
Request 1902219940 received
Request -2141153291 received
Request 1144684415 received
Request -1409053630 received
Request -546435082 received
Result 1412761034 returned
Result -1781489277 returned
Result 1008255692 returned
Result -853002509 returned
Result -919489429 returned
Result 1902219940 returned
Result -2141153291 returned
Result 1144684415 returned
Result -1409053630 returned
Result -546435082 returned
So, we accept a request - schedule a request to the database, go to the next request, we consume all of them and send a response for each request only when everything is done with the database.
About your code sample I see two possible issues - first, it looks like you don't close() connection, which is important to return it to pool. Second, how your pool is configured? If there is only one free connection - these requests will serialize waiting for this connection.
I recommend you to add some printing of a timestamp for both requests to find a place where you serialize. You have something that makes the calls in the event loop to be blocking. Or... check that you send requests in parallel in your test. Not next after getting a response after previous.

How is this asynchronous? The answer is in your question itself
What I've observed is the so called event loop is blocked until my
first request completes. Whatever little time it takes, subsequent
request is not acted upon until the previous one completes
The idea is instead of having a new for serving each HTTP request, same thread is used which you have blocked by your long running task.
The goal of event loop is to save the time involved in context switching from one thread to another thread and utilize the ideal CPU time when a task is using IO/Network activities. If while handling your request it had to other IO/Network operation eg: fetching data from a remote MongoDB instance during that time your thread will not be blocked and instead an another request would be served by the same thread which is the ideal use case of event loop model (Considering that you have concurrent requests coming to your server).
If you have long running tasks which does not involve Network/IO operation, you should consider using thread pool instead, if you block your main event loop thread itself other requests would be delayed. i.e. for long running tasks you are okay to pay the price of context switching for for server to be responsive.
EDIT:
The way a server can handle requests can vary:
1) Spawn a new thread for each incoming request (In this model the context switching would be high and there is additional cost of spawning a new thread every time)
2) Use a thread pool to server the request (Same set of thread would be used to serve requests and extra requests gets queued up)
3) Use a event loop (single thread for all the requests. Negligible context switching. Because there would be some threads running e.g: to queue up the incoming requests)
First of all context switching is not bad, it is required to keep application server responsive, but, too much context switching can be a problem if the number of concurrent requests goes too high (roughly more than 10k). If you want to understand in more detail I recommend you to read C10K article
Assume a typical request takes anywhere between 100 ms to 1 sec (based
on the kind and nature of the request). So it means, the event loop
can't accept a new connection until the previous request finishes(even
if its winds up in a second).
If you need to respond to large number of concurrent requests (more than 10k) I would consider more than 500ms as a longer running operation. Secondly, Like I said there are some threads/context switching involved e.g.: to queue up incoming requests, but, the context switching amongst threads would be greatly reduced as there would be too few threads at a time. Thirdly, if there is a network/IO operation involved in resolving first request second request would get a chance to be resolved before first is resolved, this is where this model plays well.
And If I as a programmer have to think
through all these and push such request handlers to a worker thread ,
then how does it differ from a thread/connection model?
Vertx is trying to give you best of threads and event loop, so, as programmer you can make a call on how to make your application efficient under both the scenario i.e. long running operation with and without network/IO operation.
I'm just trying to understand how is this model better from a
traditional thread/conn server models? Assume there is no I/O op or
all the I/O op are handled asynchronously? How does it even solve c10k
problem, when it can't start all concurrent requests parallely and
have to wait till the previous one terminates?
The above explanation should answer this.
Even if I decide to push all these operations to a worker
thread(pooled), then I'm back to the same problem isn't it? Context
switching between threads?
Like I said, both have pros and cons and vertx gives you both the model and depending on your use case you got to choose what is ideal for your scenario.

In these sort of processing engines, you are supposed to turn long running tasks in to asynchronously executed operations and these is a methodology for doing this, so that the critical thread can complete as quickly as possible and return to perform another task. i.e. any IO operations are passed to the framework to call you back when the IO is done.
The framework is asynchronous in the sense that it supports you producing and running these asynchronous tasks, but it doesn't change your code from being synchronous to asynchronous.

concurrent http request to independent web services

i'm trying to find a simple way to send http request concurrently to diferent web services. each request is completely independent of each other.
currently, my implementation look like this ( just a simplification, don't pay attention to design )
let's say a i have a List queries;
public class Service {
private List<HttpClient> httpClients; // one for each web service
public List<QueryResult> doQueries(List<Query> queries) {
ExecutorService service = Executors.... ;
List<Callable<QueryResult>> .... ;
for ( Query q : queries ) {
Future<> .....
}
service.invokeAll(...) ;
***// what should i do from here ?
// how should i wait all those tasks to finish ?***
}
}
my question is specifically that.
how do i wait ?

You seem to create a list of Callable and each callable will return result of type QueryResult as clear from List<Callable<QueryResult>>. You will get Future after submitting them to ExecutorService. So use code in this way:
List<Future<QueryResult >> futures = executorService.invokeAll(callables);
for(Future<QueryResult> future : futures){
System.out.println("future.get = " + future.get());
}
executorService.shutdown();
If you want to set some maximum time to wait for result you can use awaitTermination method as well. IMO ExecutorCompletionService is more suited for your requirements and you can read about it in my article at dzone.

You have 3 choices:
execute each request on a separate thread. Since each thread consumes a lot of memory, you can get OutOfMemoreError if >100 requests run in parallel.
limit the number of threads as akhil_mittal suggested. The number of concurrent requests will be also limited.
Use an async io library, e.g. nio2. They allow thousands of simultaneous requests with moderate memory consumption.