Thread methods deprecated [duplicate] - java

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.

Related

How to start & stop thread [duplicate]

I wrote a thread, it is taking too much time to execute and it seems it is not completely done. I want to stop the thread gracefully. Any help ?
The good way to do it is to have the run() of the Thread guarded by a boolean variable and set it to true from the outside when you want to stop it, something like:
class MyThread extends Thread
{
volatile boolean finished = false;
public void stopMe()
{
finished = true;
}
public void run()
{
while (!finished)
{
//do dirty work
}
}
}
Once upon a time a stop() method existed but as the documentation states
This method is inherently unsafe. Stopping a thread with Thread.stop causes it to unlock all of the monitors that it has locked (as a natural consequence of the unchecked ThreadDeath exception propagating up the stack). If any of the objects previously protected by these monitors were in an inconsistent state, the damaged objects become visible to other threads, potentially resulting in arbitrary behavior.
That's why you should have a guard..
The bad part about using a flag to stop your thread is that if the thread is waiting or sleeping then you have to wait for it to finish waiting/sleeping. If you call the interrupt method on the thread then that will cause the wait or sleep call to be exited with an InterruptedException.
(A second bad part about the flag approach is that most nontrivial code is going to be utilizing libraries like java.util.concurrent, where the classes are specifically designed to use interruption to cancel. Trying to use the hand rolled flag in a task passed into an Executor is going to be awkward.)
Calling interrupt() also sets an interrupted property that you can use as a flag to check whether to quit (in the event that the thread is not waiting or sleeping).
You can write the thread's run method so that the InterruptedException is caught outside whatever looping logic the thread is doing, or you can catch the exception within the loop and close to the call throwing the exception, setting the interrupt flag inside the catch block for the InterruptedException so that the thread doesn't lose track of the fact that it was interrupted. The interrupted thread can still keep control and finish processing on its own terms.
Say I want to write a worker thread that does work in increments, where there's a sleep in the middle for some reason, and I don't want quitting the sleep to make processing quit without doing the remaining work for that increment, I only want it to quit if it is in-between increments:
class MyThread extends Thread
{
public void run()
{
while (!Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted())
{
doFirstPartOfIncrement();
try {
Thread.sleep(10000L);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
// restore interrupt flag
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
}
doSecondPartOfIncrement();
}
}
}
Here is an answer to a similar question, including example code.
You should not kill Thread from other one. It's considered as fairly bad habit. However, there are many ways. You can use return statement from thread's run method.
Or you can check if thread has already been interrupted and then it will cancel it's work. F.e. :
while (!isInterrupted()) {
// doStuff
}
Make a volatile boolean stop somewhere. Then in the code that runs in the thread, regularly do
if (stop) // end gracefully by breaking out of loop or whatever
To stop the thread, set stop to true.
I think you must do it manually this way. After all, only the code running in the thread has any idea what is and isn't graceful.
You need to send a stop-message to the Thread and the Thread itself needs to take action if the message has been received. This is pretty easy, if the long-running action is inside loop:
public class StoppableThread extends Thread {
private volatile boolean stop = false;
public void stopGracefully() {
stop = true;
}
public void run() {
boolean finished = false;
while (!stop && !finished) {
// long running action - finished will be true once work is done
}
}
}
For a thread to stop itself, no one seems to have mentioned (mis)using exception:
abstract class SelfStoppingThread extends Thread {
#Override
public final void run() {
try {
doRun();
} catch (final Stop stop) {
//optional logging
}
}
abstract void doRun();
protected final void stopSelf() {
throw new Stop();
}
private static final class Stop extends RuntimeException {};
}
A subclass just need to override doRun() normally as you would with a Thread, and call stopSelf() whenever it feels like it wants to stop. IMO it feels cleaner than using a flag in a while loop.

The run method of Java thread does not take the updated status

The code below is my run method. This stat status does not take the newly updated status from my stop method.
#Override
public void run() {
synchronized (this) {
while (!stat) {
try {
this.wait();
} catch (InterruptedException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(TrafficLightSimulator.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
} }
}
}
In the above code, the program does not enter while loop. It is because the stat boolean new changed value from the stop method is not taken in run method.
This is my new stop
public void stop() {
synchronized(this) {
this.stopStat = false;
this.notifyAll();
}
}
I even defined the stat as the volatile boolean variable. However, this also does not seem to work.
While you have the "waiting" part correct, your "setting" part is missing some important parts.
The first part that is missing is the lock:
public void stop() {
synchronized(this) {
this.stat = true;
}
}
This lock makes sure that only 1 thread can change/access it at the same time, as is required by the Java memory model. Without this lock (and without volatile), Java makes no guarantee that changes to this variable are seen by other threads.
The next part that missing is the notifying part, it is important to "wake" up all waiting threads when the condition is changed:
public void stop() {
synchronized(this) {
this.stat = true;
this.notifyAll();
}
}
The last part of your error happens due the fact you are setting the variable to true, while for the code to be inside the while loop, the variable is already true. You probably want to set it to false instead
public void stop() {
synchronized(this) {
this.stat = false;
this.notifyAll();
}
}
Memory visibility isn't an issue here because both the code reading the flag and the code setting the flag are synchronized, holding the same lock. If your code won't enter the while loop it must be that some other thread has the lock.
This is another reason (in addition to the reasons below) to use interrupt instead of wait/notify for this. Interruption doesn't depend on acquiring a lock to work.
Use interrupt for this instead. There's no good reason for your own flag here when one is provided for you, using wait/notify for this is unnecessary and can cause problems since you may need to wait/notify for other reasons.
The Java api docs advise against locking on threads, by the way. That's what join does. Implicit locking doesn't have a way to have different conditions get separate notifications for a lock (the way ReentrantLock does).
For a thread that does things with intermittent sleeps in between, the run method can look like:
public void run() {
while (!Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) {
try {
doStuff();
Thread.sleep(1000L);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
// no need to log this as an error, it's not an error
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
}
}
}
Real world code uses threadpools where you submit Runnable or Callable tasks, the java.util.concurrent classes expect your code to handle interruption.

Best practice for Threads manipullation and Thread destroy?

I am using Threads (still..) for many stuff right now. I found many methods of thread that I would most likely use marked as deprecated.
Is there any chance to pause/resume thread with some triggers? Most people say to use wait.. but if I don't know the time ? I have some events that can happen after 5 minutes or after 2 hours...
Also .. another thing.
If I have a Thread .. it has an run() method. Now the Thread is started , run does what it has to do and then the Thread dies. Like forever ? The stuff from run() method is done so the Thread is ready to be taken out by garbage collector or is it just in some phase of disabled but still existing ?
Now you have a run method like that :
public void run(){
while(running){
//do stuff...
}
}
If I switch the running to false, run method loops and stops because there is nothing more to do . Does this thread also die ? Can I for example say after some time I want to rerun this thread, so I just set the running to true again and call the run method, or do I have to recreate the Thread once again ?
A Thread can only "live" once. When you create a Thread, you specify a Runnable instance as a target (if you don't, the thread targets itself—it implements Runnable and its default run() method does nothing). In either case, when the thread completes the run() method of its target Runnable, the thread dies.
In the example posed in the question, setting running to true after the run() method has returned will do nothing; the Thread can't be restarted after dying.
If you want to pause a thread, and reuse it later, there are a number of mechanisms. The most primitive is wait() and notify(). Rather than waiting for a specified period of time, you wait until a condition changes, like this:
abstract class Pausable implements Runnable {
private final Object lock = new Object();
private boolean pause = false;
abstract void doSomething();
#Override
public void run() {
while (cantering()) doSomething();
}
private boolean cantering() {
synchronized (lock) {
while (pause) {
try { lock.wait(); }
catch (InterruptedException ex) {
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
return false;
}
}
}
return true;
}
final void whoa() {
synchronized(lock) {
pause = true;
}
}
final void giddyup() {
synchronized(lock) {
pause = false;
lock.notify();
}
}
}
That's a lot of code, and it's fragile. I've been writing Java for 20 years and I'm not sure I got it right. That's why you should use the right tool from java.util.concurrency. For example, if you are waking up the thread to process a message, use a BlockingQueue, and let the consuming thread wait for messages to arrive on the queue. If you have tasks you want to perform asynchronously in response to some event, create an ExecutorService and submit the tasks. Even if you do want to use something like wait()/notify(), the concurrency package's Condition class gives you a lot more control over locking than intrinsic locks offer.
Can I [...] and call the run method?
If you have a Thread t = ...;, and you write a call to t.run(), you probably are making a mistake.
A Thread is not a thread. A thread is a path of execution through your code. A Thread is an object with methods that can be used to create a new thread and manage its life-cycle.
You create the new thread by calling t.start().
Remember this mantra:
The start() method is the method that the library provides for your code to call when you want to start a new thread.
The run() method is the method that your code provides for the library to call in the new thread.

Interrupt Thread in java

I have a situation where I'm using a Thread, she call a method that will do multiple processes, I need to use a "cancel" button in which you have to stop the thread, I not can use: "while" ,to verify that it was canceled because it not has loop in this process.
Ex:
Task<Void> task = new Task<Void>() {
#Override
protected Void call() throws Exception {
controller = new FirstEtapaController();
execProcess();
return null;
}
};
new Thread(task).start();
Call Method
private void execProcess() {
Thread thread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
getController().execMhetod();
refreshTable();
}
});
thread.start();
thread.join();
};
Ie, I need to stop this process, even when the "ExecMethod" already running, it will take minutes, so I've gotta stop it and not have to wait for him to finish so that , others do not continues.
Remembering that this process will do iteration with my DAO.
The only way (well behaved way) is to add logic points in you spawned threads to check for an interrupted state. You can choose to use the built-in Thread.interrupt() mechanisms, or add your own logic using some form of thread-safe variable (an AtomicBoolean?) or a Semaphore of some sort.
If you use the Thread.interrupt() then your child processes will throw an InterruptedException when they encounter certain conditions, like Thread.wait() and other methods which require synchronization or use the java.util.concurrent.* classes.
You will need to (should already be) handle the InterruptedExceptions in the threads anyway, but perhaps you will need to put regular 'checks' in your child processes to look for the interrupted state anyway (can use Thread.isInterrupted() )
It is worth reading this Handling InterruptedException in Java
If instead of a raw Thread if you use an ExecutorService you'll end up with lots of additional methods/levers to control your threads, one of which is shutdownAll() which uses Thread.interrupt() to kill your thread and lets you check thread status via isTerminated()
Your user interface does not have to wait for the worker thread to finish, so don't worry too much about that.
Alas, Thread.destroy() and Thread.stop() are deprecated, due to bad implementations. I don't think there is a good "sig-kill" type of substitute for Java threads. You are going to have to recode the worker to check an abort flag of some kind, if it matters much. Otherwise, just let it waste a little CPU. ("you can't cancel that Save -- I've already done it!", in effect)
Whether or not a task can be canceled really depends on its implementation. Typically it intermittently checks a flag whether it should continue or not.
You can implement such a flag yourself, and a method to set it :
private volatile boolean shouldStop;
public void cancel() {
shouldStop = true;
}
#Override
public void run() {
while (!shouldStop) {
// do work
}
}
But threads already come with a flag : the interrupted flag. And while it is not necessarily used for canceling a thread, it is typical to use it for exactly that purpose. In fact the standard ExecutorService implementations will try to cancel their threads by interrupting them.
Aside from that several blocking methods (methods that put a thread in BLOCKED or WAITING state) will throw an InterruptedException when the thread is interrupted, at which point they become RUNNABLE again. This is something the previous approach with a boolean flag cannot achieve.
Therefore it is a better approach to use interruption to allow a task to be canceled. And you do not really need that cancel() method any more either :
#Override
public void run() {
while (!Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) {
// do work
}
}
As a bonus, any code that knows your thread, knows how to cancel it. Including standard ExecutorService implementations.
Care should be taken when catching an InterruptedException, since doing that clears the interrupted flag. It is adviseable to always restore the interrupted flag when catching the Exception, so clients also know it's time to stop doing what they're doing.
private BlockingQueue<Integer> queue;
#Override
public void run() {
while (!Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) {
try {
Integer id = queue.take(); // blocking method
// do work
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
}
}
}
To cancel a thread, you can simply keep a reference to the Thread object and call interrupt() on it :
Thread thread = new Thread(new InterruptibleTask());
thread.start();
// some time after :
thread.interrupt();
But a more elegant approach is keeping tabs on your task (and not so much the specific thread it runs on) through a Future object. You can do this by wrapping your Runnable or Callable in a FutureTask.
RunnableFuture<Void> task = new FutureTask<>(new InterruptibleTask(), null);
new Thread(task).start();
// some time after :
task.cancel(true); // true indicating interruption may be used to cancel.
A Future is key in controlling your task. It allows you to wait for its completion, and optionally receive a value the task calculated :
try {
String value = future.get(); // return value is generically typed String is just as example.
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
Thread.currentThread().interrupt(); // since future.get() blocks
} catch (ExecutionException e) {
logger.log(Level.SEVERE, "Exception on worker thread", e.getCause()); // the ExecutionException's cause is the Exception that occurred in the Task
}
If you have several tasks (or even just one) it is worth using an ExecutorService :
ExecutorService pool = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
Future<?> submit = pool.submit(new InterruptibleTask());
pool.shutdownNow(); // depending on ExecutorService implementation this will cancel all tasks for you, the ones Executors returns do.

Implement timeout in Java 1.4

I can not use Executor and Future for trapping TimeOutException as it is 1.4
I need to timeout after 30 seconds if method is not complete.
//Caller class
public static void main() {
EJBMethod() // has to timeout after 30 seconds
}
//EJB method in some other class
public void EJBMethod() {
}
An approach that I am thinking is to wrap this method call in a Runnable and set some volatile boolean from run() after method is over. THen , in caller, we can sleep for 30 seconds after calling that method and once woke up, I will check the boolean in caller if it is SET. If not set, then we need to stop that thread.
In the simplest case, you could just go with a Thread + an arbitrary Runnable.
If you want to make the call blocking from the perspective of the caller, you can create a "service" class that runs a worker thread and uses Thread.join(long) to wait for the operation to complete or abandon it after the specified timeout (Pay special attention to the proper handling of InterruptedException so things don't get messed up).
Thread.isAlive() will tell you whether the Thread finished or not.
Retrieving the result is a separate concern; I guess you can deal with that...
[EDIT]
Quick-and-dirty example (do not use in production as is!):
/**
* Actually needs some refactoring
* Also, did not verify for atomicity - should be redesigned
*/
public V theServiceCall(final T param) {
final MyResultBuffer<V> buffer = new MyResultBuffer<V>();
Runnable task = new Runnable() {
public void run() {
V result = ejb.process(param);
buffer.putResult(result);
}
}
Thread t = new Thread(task);
t.setDaemon(true);
t.start();
try {
t.join(TASK_TIMEOUT_MILLIS);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
// Handle it as needed (current thread is probably asked to terminate)
}
return (t.isAlive()) ? null : buffer.getResult();
}
NOTE: Instead of Thread.setDaemon() you can implement a shutdown flag in your Runnable as it would be a better solution.
[/EDIT]

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