Develop Reference

Best way to use Future in java

I have a set of jobs which I am submitting using executor framework and Future. Let's say that I have 100 futures. As of now, I am using Future.get and using the output for subsequent processing. However for further tuning, I want to change the flow as below:
iterate through the set of future tasks and start consuming the result as soon as a future task is complete. I am reading the API doc to understand what might be a good way to accomplish this but reaching out to see if there is a better way to accomplish what I am looking for.
Here is the sample code:
public class ImplCallable implements Callable<String> {
int timeOut;
ImplCallable(int timeOut) {
this.timeOut=timeOut;
}
public String call() throws Exception {
Thread.sleep(timeOut);
return Thread.currentThread().getName();
}
}
and the main class:
public class MainProg {
public static void main(String...args) throws Exception {
long startTimeInMillis = System.currentTimeMillis();
ImplCallable callable1 = new ImplCallable(1000);
ImplCallable callable2 = new ImplCallable(2000);
ExecutorService service = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(4);
Future<String> task1 = service.submit(callable1);
Future<String> task2 = service.submit(callable2);
List<Future<String>> futureList = new ArrayList();
futureList.add(task1);
futureList.add(task2);
String retVal;
for(Future<String> task:futureList) {
retVal = task.get();
//do something with the retVal
}
long endTimeInMillis = System.currentTimeMillis();
System.out.println("time taken by code - " + (endTimeInMillis-startTimeInMillis) + "-ms");
}
}
Basically I don't want to use Future.get() and wait for its completion. I want to know if either of the task is complete and use the result as soon as its done.

There are many ways do this so, without a concrete example, you won't get a concrete answer. Likely want to look at CompletableFuture which has many methods for defining follow-on work, combining work, splitting work etc.
Future<String> f = CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(() -> "INITIAL WORK")
.thenApply(String::toLowerCase) // Do some more work
.thenAccept(queue::add); // put results onto a queue something is reading from
f.join();
// Batch complete

I hope you are using Java 8 or later version.
Whenever you mention "as soon as a future task is complete", you want to use CompletableFuture and its .thenApply() method, as #drekbour suggests.
Then you have multiple threads running different tasks in non-determenistic sequence. But at the end you want to get all the results in the single (Main) thread. To achieve it, you can use CompletableFuture.allOf method, .join() it - and then iterate over all the (already completed) future results without waiting.

JavaFX Task Callable

I was developing a JavaFX app and I was supplying the JavaFX tasks in an ExecutorService submit method. Also I was trying to get the return value of the Task in the return value of the submit in a Future object. Then I discovered that ExecutorService only returns value when you submit a Callable object, and JavaFX Tasks are runnables despite having a call method. so is there any workaround for this problem?
I tried and solved my problem this way but I'm open to suggestions when I don't want to write my own class.
My main method:
public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException, ExecutionException {
ExecutorService executorService = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
Semaphore semaphore = new Semaphore(1);
List<Integer> list = IntStream.range(0,100).boxed().collect(Collectors.toList());
Iterator<Integer> iterator = list.iterator();
while (iterator.hasNext()){
List<Integer> sendingList = new ArrayList<>();
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
sendingList.add(iterator.next());
}
System.out.println("SUBMITTING");
Future<Integer> future = executorService.submit((Callable<Integer>) new TestCallable(sendingList,semaphore));
System.out.println(future.get());
semaphore.acquire();
}
executorService.shutdown();
System.out.println("COMPLETED");
}
My TestCallable class:
class TestCallable extends Task<Integer> implements Callable<Integer> {
private Random random = new Random();
private List<Integer> list;
private Semaphore semaphore;
TestCallable(List<Integer> list, Semaphore semaphore) {
this.list = list;
this.semaphore = semaphore;
}
#Override
public Integer call(){
System.out.println("SENDING");
System.out.println(list);
try {
Thread.sleep(1000+random.nextInt(500));
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
System.out.println("RECEIVED");
semaphore.release();
return list.size();
}
}

Task extends java.util.concurrent.FutureTask which in turn implements the Future interface. This means you can use a Task just like a Future.
Executor executor = ...;
Task<?> task = ...;
executor.execute(task);
task.get(); // Future method
This will cause the thread calling get() to wait until completion. However, a Task's purpose is to communicate the progress of a background process with the JavaFX Application Thread. It's close relationship to the GUI means you will most likely be launching a Task from the FX thread. This will lead to get() being called on the FX thread which is not what you want as it will freeze the GUI until get() returns; you might as well have just called Task.run directly.
Instead, you should be using the asynchronous functionality provided by Task. If you want to retrieve the value when the Task completes successfully you can use the onSucceeded property or listen to the value/state property. There's also ways to listen for failure/cancellation.
Executor executor = ...;
Task<?> task = ...;
task.setOnSucceeded(event -> handleResult(task.getValue()));
task.setOnFailed(event -> handleException(task.getException()));
executor.execute(task);
If you don't need the functionality provided by Task then it would probably be best to simply use Runnable or Callable directly.

It's not very clear what you want to do here.
Firstly, your Semaphore does nothing because you used Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor(), which already guarantees that only one task can run at any point in time.
Secondly, like what #Slaw mentioned, you are potentially blocking on JavaFX Application thread, depending on your actual implementation (your example isn't really a JavaFX application).
Next, ExecutorService has 2 main overloads for submit().
The first overload takes in a Callable. This overload allows you to retrieve the value returned by the Callable (by calling get() on the returned Future), because Callable refers to something that is can be called - it can return value.
The second overload takes in a Runnable. Since Task implements Future RunnableFuture interface, and Future RunnableFuture interface extends Runnable interface, passing in a Task would be equivalent to calling this overload. This overload does not expect a result to be returned, because Runnable is something that you run without a result. Calling get() on the Future returned by this overload will block until the task finishes, and null will be returned. If you need to retrieve the value returned by the Task, you need to call get() of the Task, not the Future returned by ExecutorService.submit().
Edit based on OP's comments
Firstly, since the calling method is already running in a background thread, and all tasks are expected to run sequentially (instead of parallelly), then you should just run them without all these additional ExecutorService and Task, unless there is another reason why this has to be done.
Secondly, a List object is nothing but an object doing referencing. What could have really affected performance is that you are copying the reference of the elements to the new list. You could have used List.subList()if the indices are known, as the returned list would use the same backing array as the original list, so there isn't an additional O(n) operation for copying.

ExecutorService for Do-While Loop in Java

I am new to concurrency and I was trying to implement executor service concurrency for a do-while loop. But I always run into RejectedExecutionException
Here is my sample code:
do {
Future<Void> future = executor.submit(new Callable<Void>() {
#Override
public Void call() throws Exception {
// action
return null;
}
});
futures.add(future);
executor.shutdown();
for (Future<Void> future : futures) {
try {
future.get();
}
catch (InterruptedException e) {
throw new IOException(e)
}
}
}
while (true);
But this seems incorrect. I think I am calling the shutdown at the wrong place. Can anyone please help me implement Executor Service in a do-while loop correctly. Thanks.

ExecutorService.shutdown() stops the ExecutorService from accepting anymore jobs. It should be called when you're done submitting jobs.
Also Future.get() is a blocking method, which means it will block the execution of current thread and next iteration of loop will not continue unless this future (on which the get is called) returns. This will happen in every iteration, which makes the code non parallel.
You can use a CountDownLatch to wait for all the jobs to return.
Following is the correct code.
final List<Object> results = Collections.synchronizedList(new ArrayList<Object>());
final CountDownLatch latch = new CountDownLatch(10);//suppose you'll have 10 futures
do {
Future<Void> future = executor.submit(new Callable<Void>() {
#Override
public Void call() throws Exception {
// action
latch.countDown();//decrease the latch count
results.add(result); // some result
return null;
}
});
futures.add(future);
} while (true);
executor.shutdown();
latch.await(); //This will block till latch.countDown() has been called 10 times.
//Now results has all the outputs, do what you want with them.
Also if you're working with Java 8 then you can take a look at this answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/36261808/5343269

You're right, the shutdown method is not being called at the correct time. The ExecutorService will not accept tasks after shutdown is called (unless you implement your own version that does).
You should call shutdown after you've already submitted all tasks to the executor, so in this case, somewhere after the do-while loop.

From ThreadPoolExecutor documentation:
Rejected tasks
New tasks submitted in method execute(Runnable) will be rejected when the Executor has been shut down, and also when the Executor uses finite bounds for both maximum threads and work queue capacity, and is saturated.
In either case, the execute method invokes the RejectedExecutionHandler.rejectedExecution(Runnable, ThreadPoolExecutor) method of its RejectedExecutionHandler
From your code, it's clearly evident that you are calling shutdown() first and submitting the tasks later.
On a different note, refer to this related SE question for right way of shutting down ExecutorService:
ExecutorService's shutdown() doesn't wait until all threads will be finished

How to hand over a method call on a Master to n Workers and return?

Let's assume we have n Workers which do some computation. The computation may take a while and n computations may run in parallel. Each Worker needs some data structure (not shared between Workers) to do the work.
I thought about setting up each Worker during some initialization of the Master and handing over the required data structure to the Worker's constructor.
public class Master {
public Master() {
// initialize n Workers and "register" them "somewhere"
}
public boolean doCompute(int someInput) throws NoIdleWorkerException {
// check if there is an idle Worker, otherwise throw NoIdleWorkerException
// call the idle Worker, hand over someInput and wait for the result
// synchronously return the result
}
}
A Worker may implement Runnable and then be handed over to a Thread. An instance of Worker may be reused.
public class Worker implements Runnable {
private SomeDataStructure ds;
public Worker(SomeDataStructure ds) {
this.ds = ds;
}
public void run() {
// may call doCompute, but run() doesn't has a return type
}
public boolean doCompute(int someInput) {
// do the computation an return
}
}
What is the best way to manage the Worker instances? I was thinking about using ThreadFactory which returns a Thread only if a Worker instance is idle, otherwise null. Using this approach, I would have to manage Worker instances in some data structure.
Also, since Master.doCompute(int someInput) has a return value but its computation is done by a Thread, thus asynchronously, I may have to use Futures. Are there any alternatives?

Assuming that your Master has to do something with the results of all the workers for a given invocation, I would implement each worker as a Callable, with the work to be done implemented in its call function.
Then the master can generate its list of Callables from whatever you pass in and pass those to a ThreadPoolExecutor (which means you can control the number of threads actually in use for parallel processing of this kind) via the invokeAll method.
invokeAll returns a list of Futures, which will either have completed or have had a timeout expire (if you choose to set one). You can check if they have cancelled (timed out).
See http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/AbstractExecutorService.html#invokeAll(java.util.Collection) for further details.

How to implement an ExecutorService to execute batches of tasks

I am looking for a way to execute batches of tasks in java. The idea is to have an ExecutorService based on a thread pool that will allow me to spread a set of Callable among different threads from a main thread. This class should provide a waitForCompletion method that will put the main thread to sleep until all tasks are executed. Then the main thread should be awaken, and it will perform some operations and resubmit a set of tasks.
This process will be repeated numerous times, so I would like to use ExecutorService.shutdown as this would require to create multiple instances of ExecutorService.
Currently I have implemented it in the following way using a AtomicInteger, and a Lock/Condition:
public class BatchThreadPoolExecutor extends ThreadPoolExecutor {
private final AtomicInteger mActiveCount;
private final Lock mLock;
private final Condition mCondition;
public <C extends Callable<V>, V> Map<C, Future<V>> submitBatch(Collection<C> batch){
...
for(C task : batch){
submit(task);
mActiveCount.incrementAndGet();
}
}
#Override
protected void afterExecute(Runnable r, Throwable t) {
super.afterExecute(r, t);
mLock.lock();
if (mActiveCount.decrementAndGet() == 0) {
mCondition.signalAll();
}
mLock.unlock();
}
public void awaitBatchCompletion() throws InterruptedException {
...
// Lock and wait until there is no active task
mLock.lock();
while (mActiveCount.get() > 0) {
try {
mCondition.await();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
mLock.unlock();
throw e;
}
}
mLock.unlock();
}
}
Please not that I will not necessarily submit all the tasks from the batch at once, therefore CountDownLatch does not seem to be an option.
Is this a valid way to do it? Is there a more efficient/elegant way to implement that?
Thanks

I think the ExecutorService itself will be able to perform your requirements.
Call invokeAll([...]) and iterate over all of your Tasks. All Tasks are finished, if you can iterate through all Futures.

As the other answers point out, there doesn't seem to be any part of your use case that requires a custom ExecutorService.
It seems to me that all you need to do is submit a batch, wait for them all to finish while ignoring interrupts on the main thread, then submit another batch perhaps based on the results of the first batch. I believe this is just a matter of:
ExecutorService service = ...;
Collection<Future> futures = new HashSet<Future>();
for (Callable callable : tasks) {
Future future = service.submit(callable);
futures.add(future);
}
for(Future future : futures) {
try {
future.get();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
// Figure out if the interruption means we should stop.
}
}
// Use the results of futures to figure out a new batch of tasks.
// Repeat the process with the same ExecutorService.

I agree with #ckuetbach that the default Java Executors should provide you with all of the functionality you need to execute a "batch" of jobs.
If I were you I would just submit a bunch of jobs, wait for them to finish with the ExecutorService.awaitTermination() and then just start up a new ExecutorService. Doing this to save on "thread creations" is premature optimization unless you are doing this 100s of times a second or something.
If you really are stuck on using the same ExecutorService for each of the batches then you can allocate a ThreadPoolExecutor yourself, and be in a loop looking at ThreadPoolExecutor.getActiveCount(). Something like:
BlockingQueue jobQueue = new LinkedBlockingQueue<Runnable>();
ThreadPoolExecutor executor = new ThreadPoolExecutor(NUM_THREADS, NUM_THREADS,
0L, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS, jobQueue);
// submit your batch of jobs ...
// need to wait a bit for the jobs to start
Thread.sleep(100);
while (executor.getActiveCount() > 0 && jobQueue.size() > 0) {
// to slow the spin
Thread.sleep(1000);
}
// continue on to submit the next batch