Develop Reference

What does a Swing Call mean?

I have a project that takes time to load everything so I create a splash screen that tells the user through a progressbar how much time it will take to fully load and show the UI, but I'm facing a problem.
When I create my splash, this shows up correctly but then I create and initialize the Principal frame and everything freeze until this has fully load.
So, I try to load my Principal frame in a thread using SwingWorker (and it works) but after unknown NullPointerExceptions and reading a lot I found that this is a terrible idea because I am not creating my UI in the EDT, so here I am stuck.
I know that I must do Swing Calls in the Event Dispatch Thread (EDT) and non-swing heavy work in SwingWorkers but initialize the Swing Components of my Principal Frame are a heavy work too so, what should I do?
I have read some question here, specially this, and I think I get it but I have doubts. Taking that example:
SwingUtilities.invokeAndWait(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
new SplashScreen();
}
});
// Code to start system (nothing that touches the GUI)
SwingUtilities.invokeAndWait(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
new MainFrame();
}
});
//.. etc
And reading this site that says:
The Swing framework manages component drawing, updates, and event handlers on the EDT.
Is creating a new component a Swing Call? If it is, What should I do if new MainFrame() will take some time because the project has a lot of components to initialize?
How do I tell the Splash something like "Program loaded 50%"?
What does a Swing Call means and how can I do a correct use of invokeLater and SwingWorker? Maybe the solution is too obvious or have already an answer, but I can't see it and I apologize if this is the case.
Thanks!

You're on a right track. But don't use invokeAndWait (if you have to only) - use invokeLater:
invokeAndWait
Causes doRun.run() to be executed synchronously on the AWT event dispatching thread.
invokeLater
Causes doRun.run() to be executed asynchronously on the AWT event dispatching thread.
Consider that block wrapped doLater is run on EDT thread and code wrapped in doOutside is invoked in another thread (and that's why you don't block the UI):
EDIT:
As pointed out in the comments I add the explanations for the concepts I'll use.
doLater {
// here goes the code
}
is a concept for:
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
// here goes the code
}
});
And
doOutside {
// here goes the code
}
is a concept for:
new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
// here goes the code
}
}).start();
doLater {
final MainFrame m = new MainFrame();
doOutside {
// handle heavy operation
final int result = 1;
doLater {
m.setResult(result);
}
}
}
Conclusion: everything that touches Swing in some way must be run on EDT.
If you want to update percentages:
doLater {
final MainFrame m = new MainFrame();
doOutside {
// handle progress
for(int i = 0; i < someSize; ++i) {
final int progress = i;
doLater {
m.getProgressBar().setProgress(progress);
}
}
}
}
I hope you understand the concept now. The SwingWorker just do exectly something as doOutside === doInBackground & doLater === done/progress
Btw. The code above is a real code: lookup Griffon framework in Groovy.

Maintaining Synchronization using JAVA and JNI

I have been struggling to accomplish a GUI driven task that is initiated in a thread that takes a while to compute and is also accomplished over the JNI using C++ native code. When the computationally intensive task is run, the synchronization is lost, otherwise, synchronization is fine.
Can someone help with an implementation structure where synchronization of the time is not lost? I have a hunch it is because my use of JNI.
The structure of the my problem is below:
1) A button (animate) is selected and triggers an event for a GUI listener
2) GUI recognized that the button was pressed and starts a thread below:
3) Once button is pressed again, the thread closes.
private class Animator implements Runnable
{
public void start()
{
if (thread == null)
{
thread = new Thread(this, "Animator");
thread.start();
}
}
public void run()
{
while (animate.isSelected())
{
updateAnimations();
}
resetAnimations();
thread = null;
}
public void updateAnimations()
{
double time = scene.getTime(); // A singleton class and scene time
time += 10;
scene.update(time); // the scene updates its parameters to time and redraws the GUI. One of the computations is done over the JNI and takes too long and synchronization is lost (i.e. time = [10 40 80 ...])
}
Thread thread;
}

Stop ALL Awt/Swing threads and monitors and stuff so that just the main thread is left

I have the following
public static void main(String[] args) {
boolean running = true;
boolean foo= false;
while(running)
{
doSomeTask(); // might set foo true
if(foo) {
//This call waits/blocks until gui is done working.
fireUpSwingGui(); //does work...
foo=false;
godModeReleaseGUIandALLResourcesOnlyWantMainThreadLeft();
}
}
}
Hope that godModeReleaseGUIandALLResourcesOnlyWantMainThreadLeft() says it all.
Bear in mind that we might fire up the gui again at a later stage when foo becomes true again somewhere inside doSomeTask().

Take a look at AWT Threading Issues which explains the criteria for an AWT application to exit. The part you want to focus on is the following:
Therefore, a stand-alone AWT application that wishes to exit cleanly
without calling System.exit must:
Make sure that all AWT or Swing components are made undisplayable when the application finishes. This can be done by calling Window.dispose on all top-level Windows. See Frame.getFrames.
Make sure that no method of AWT event listeners registered by the application with any AWT or Swing component can run into an infinite loop or hang indefinitely. For example, an AWT listener method triggered by some AWT event can post a new AWT event of the same type to the EventQueue. The argument is that methods of AWT event listeners are typically executed on helper threads.
A quick sample app to demonstrate...
import java.awt.Frame;
import javax.swing.JOptionPane;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;
public class CloseAWT
{
private static boolean running = true;
private static int response = -1;
public static void main(String[] args)
{
boolean showSwing = true;
boolean checkFrames = true;
while (running)
{
if (showSwing)
{
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable()
{
public void run()
{
response = JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog(null, "Hello World?");
}
});
showSwing = false;
}
else
{
if (response >= 0 && checkFrames)
{
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable()
{
public void run()
{
// topFrame.dispose();
Frame[] frames = Frame.getFrames();
System.out.printf("frames.length=%d\n", frames.length);
}
});
checkFrames = false;
}
}
}
}
}
To confirm the behavior was as expected, I ran this in JProfiler. After clicking 'yes' to dismiss the confirmation dialog, the 'AWT-EventQueue-0' thread was marked as dead. The only threads alive after this were the 'main' and the thread which listens for Ctrl-Break.
I highly recommend using something like JProfiler, YourKit, JProbe or one of the free profilers to make sure you've properly released all the components and removed all the listeners.
One final thought... You might want to consider spawning your GUI as a separate process and using some sort of IPC to pass information between your daemon process and GUI. Although this incurs the additional overhead of an extra process and the IPC, it would give you a greater assurance that your GUI is completely cleaned up when it is no longer needed.

Assuming you're opening JFrame isntances, why don't you just store them in a collection and inside godModeReleaseGUIandALLResourcesOnlyWantMainThreadLeft() you iterate over them ans call setVisible(false);
I'm not sure whether you actually can stop the AWT event queue that drives the gui.

How to programatically call a button that runs as an independent task?

I have implemented Conway's Game of Life problem in Java swing. Everything is working fine. As you can see in the screenshot below, whenever the "Tick" button is clicked, the game progresses to the next life form. Now, I am planning to include an "Autoplay" button alongside "Tick" button. The purpose of this autoplay is simple. When I hit it, an automated operation should carry on as if I am pressing tick button at an interval of 1 second.
I tried this. But this seems to block all the other operations. How to do this action in a separate thread? A small code snippet would get me going.
class AutoPlayListener implements ActionListener{
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
if(e.getSource() == btnAutoPlay){
while(true){
Thread.sleep(1000); //InterruptedException try catch hidden
btnTick.doClick();
}
}
}
}

Use a javax.swing.Timer. It will be able to work with the existing ActionListener if the while(true) and Thread.sleep() calls are removed.

As #Ranman said you're blocking main UI thread. I believe SwingUtilities.invokeLater is usually used for things like this.

There are two options:
Start a new thread. The thread will contain the while loop, and execute a method that processes the array. In each iteration, call repaint() or invalidate() on your window to tell it that it needs redrawing.
Use a Timer. The GUI thread will call your routine at regular intervals.
Threads:
In actionPerformed method, create a new Thread. and call its start method.
The Runnable of the thread should run a while loop (as you have already done), and then simply exit.
Timer:
Create an object in your class of type Timer. Use the one in java.swing.Timer if you are using swing (there is also java.util.Timer which isn't good for GUI ops). The timer should have an ActionListener that calls your method once, but the Timer has a repeat rate of 1000ms.
Tips
to invoke the action, you should put it in a separate method, rather than directly under the button handler. That way, you aren't calling GUI stuff from outside the GUI thread.
e.g.
tickButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener(){
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
doTick();
}
});
The mechanism to stop the thread is equally important! In general, don't use a while(true) in a thread as it will get lost; invent a semaphore to terminate it.
use a JToggleButton rather than Button?
Synchronization:
If you use threads, you will need something like this, to prevent new threads being created each time the button is pressed:
Code
Thread autoplayThread = null;
Object lock;
boolean autoplaying = false;
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
synchronized(lock){ // prevent any race condition here
if(!autoplaying && autoplayThread==null ){
autoplaying = true;
autoplayThread = new Thread(new Runnable(){
public void run(){
try{
while(autoplaying){ .... }
}finally{
synchronized(lock) {
autoplaying=false;
autoplayThread=null;
}
}
}
});
autoplayThread.start();
}else{ // stop the thread!
autoplaying=false;
}
}
}

Output to jTextArea in realtime

I have some code which takes a few minutes to process, it has to connect to the web for each string in a long array, each string is a url. I want to make it so that everytime it connects, it should refresh the jtextarea so that the user is not staring into a blank page that looks frozen for 20 min. or however long it takes. here is an example of something i tried and didnt work:
try {
ArrayList<String> myLinks = LinkParser.getmyLinksArray(jTextArea1.getText());
for (String s : myLinks) {
jTextArea2.append(LinkChecker.checkFileStatus(s) + "\n");
}
} catch (IOException ex) {
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(jTextArea1, "Parsing Error", "Parsing Error", JOptionPane.ERROR_MESSAGE);
Logger.getLogger(MYView.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
}

The problem is that you need to perform the computation asynchronously. You should create a background thread that performs the computation, and then use SwingUtilities.invokeLater to update the JTextArea.
final ArrayList<String> myLinks = //...
(new Thread()
{
public void run(){
for (String s : myLinks) {
try{
final String result = LinkChecker.checkFileStatus(s) + "\n";
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable(){
public void run(){
jtextArea2.append(result);
}
});
}catch(IOException error){
// handle error
}
}
}
}).start();
Edit
It has been pointed out that JTextArea's append function actually is thread safe (unlike most Swing functions). Therefore, for this particular, case it is not necessary to update it via invokeLater. However, you should still do you processing in a background thread so as to allow the GUI to update, so the code is:
final ArrayList<String> myLinks = //...
(new Thread()
{
public void run(){
for (String s : myLinks) {
try{
jtextArea2.append(LinkChecker.checkFileStatus(s) + "\n");
}catch(IOException error){
// handle error
}
}
}
}).start();
However, for pretty much any other operation that modifies a Swing object, you will need to use invokeLater (to ensure the modification occurs in the GUI thread), since almost all the Swing functions aren't thread safe.

You need to investigate threading and its relationship to GUI updates in Swing. Anything that affects or makes use of GUI components in Swing must done on a special thread called the Event Dispatch Thread (EDT).
If your code snippet, if it's freezing the GUI, I imagine that it is being run in the EDT. Performing a long-running action on the EDT will make the GUI unresponsive, because no further updates can be done while your long-running process is using the thread.
There is a helper class called SwingWorker that allows you to offload long-running computations to a background thread, and then make updates to the GUI thread when it is complete. The SwingWorker looks after the context switches between the GUI thread and the background thread. You can also display progress bars to let the user know the state of the long-running process, so they know your application hasn't hung.

swing/awt is a single threaded library, so once a component is shown, just changing it's appearance won't work correctly. You need to change the component on the GUI Thread, not from your thread. To do this wrap any code that updates a component with SwingUtilities.invokeLater... as in
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable()
{
public void run()
{
jTextArea2.append(LinkChecker.checkFileStatus(s) + "\n");
}
});
also you want to limit what you do on the gui thread to avoid the gui from becoming sluggish, so if checkFileStatus is time consuming, execute it outside the run method and store the result in a final local variable, and just access the variable in the run() code.