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How to throw an exception on another Thread in Java?

So I'm using ListenableFuture as a return type for certain operations. I expect the users to add callback to the future and then handle the success and exception cases. Now if the user cannot handle the exception, I want to have the ability to throw that exception onto the main Thread. Here's some code example:
public class SomeProcessor {
ListeningExecutorService executor = MoreExecutors.listeningDecorator(Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor());
public ListenableFuture<String> doStringProcessing() {
return executor.submit(() -> doWork());
}
private String doWork() {
return "stuff";
}
}
Then in a client class:
public class SomeConsumer {
public SomeConsumer (SomeProcessor processor) {
Futures.addCallback(processor.doStringProcessing(), new FutureCallback<String>() {
#Override
public void onSuccess(String result) {
// do something with result
}
#Override
public void onFailure(Throwable t) {
if (t instanceof ExceptionICanHandle) {
// great, deal with it
} else {
// HERE I want to throw on the Main thread, not on the executor's thread
// Assume somehow I can get a hold of the main thread object
mainThread.getUncaughtExceptionHandler().uncaughtException(mainThread, t);
// This above code seems wrong???
throw new RuntimeException("Won't work as this is not on the mainthread");
}
}
}, MoreExecutors.directionExecutor());
}
}

There is no direct way to do this.1
Hence, this question boils down to a combination of 2 simple things:
How do I communicate some data from a submitted task back to the code that is managing the pool itself? Which boils down to: How do I send data from one thread to another, and...
How do I throw an exception - which is trivial - throw x;.
In other words, you make the exception in your task, and do not throw it, instead, you store the object in a place the main thread can see it, and notify the main thread they need to go fetch it and throw it. Your main thread waits for this notification and upon receiving it, fetches it, and throws it.
A submitted task cannot simply 'ask' for its pool or the thread that manages it. However, that is easy enough to solve: Simply pass either the 'main thread' itself, or more likely some third object that serves as common communication line between them, to the task itself, so that task knows where to go.
Here is one simplistic approach based on the raw synchronization primitives baked into java itself:
public static void main(String[] args) {
// I am the main thread
// Fire up the executorservice here and submit tasks to it.
// then ordinarily you would let this thread end or sleep.
// instead...
ExecutorService service = ...;
AtomicReference<Throwable> err = new AtomicReference<>();
Runnable task = () -> doWork(err);
service.submit(task);
while (true) {
synchronized (err) {
Throwable t = err.get();
if (t != null) throw t;
err.wait();
}
}
}
public void doWork(AtomicReference<Throwable> envelope) {
try {
doActualWork();
catch (Throwable t) {
synchronized (envelope) {
envelope.set(t);
envelope.notifyAll();
}
}
}
There are many, many ways to send messages from one thread to another and the above is a rather finicky, primitive form. It'll do fine if you don't currently have any comms channels already available to you. But, if you already have e.g. a message queue service or the like you should probably use that instead here.
[1] Thread.stop(someThrowable) literally does this as per its own documentation. However, it doesn't work - it's not just deprecated, it has been axed entirely; calling it throws an UnsupportedOperationException on modern VMs (I think at this point 10 years worth of releases at least), and is marked deprecated with the rather ominous warning of This method is inherently unsafe. and a lot more to boot, it's not the right answer.

Interrupting unknown thread

Consider the following (simplified) class, designed to allow my entire component to enter some interim state before completely stopping. (The purpose of the interim state is to allow the component to complete its existing tasks, but reject any new ones).
The component might be started and stopped multiple times from any number of threads.
class StopHandler {
boolean isStarted = false;
synchronized void start() {isStarted = true;}
//synchronized as I do want the client code to block until the component is stopped.
//I might add some async method as well, but let's concentrate on the sync version only.
synchronized void stop(boolean isUrgent) {
if (isStarted) {
if (!isUrgent) {
setGlobalState(PREPARING_TO_STOP); //assume it is implemented
try {Thread.sleep(10_000L);} catch (InterruptedException ignored) {}
}
isStarted = false;
}
}
The problem with the current implementation is that if some client code needs to urgently stop the component while it is in the interim state, it will still have to wait.
For example:
//one thread
stopHandler.stop(false); //not urgent => it is sleeping
//another thread, after 1 millisecond:
stopHandler.stop(true); //it's urgent, "please stop now", but it will wait for 10 seconds
How would you implement it?
I might need to interrupt the sleeping thread, but I don't have the sleeping thread object on which to call 'interrupt()'.

How about storing a reference to current Thread (returned by Thread.currentThread()) in a field of StopHandler directly before you call sleep? That would allow you you to interrupt it in the subsequent urgent call in case the Thread is still alive.

Couldn't find a better solution than the one suggested by Lars.
Just need to encapsulate the sleep management for completeness.
class SleepHandler {
private final ReentrantLock sleepingThreadLock;
private volatile Thread sleepingThread;
SleepHandler() {
sleepingThreadLock = new ReentrantLock();
}
void sleep(long millis) throws InterruptedException {
setSleepingThread(Thread.currentThread());
Thread.sleep(millis);
setSleepingThread(null);
}
void interruptIfSleeping() {
doWithinSleepingThreadLock(() -> {
if (sleepingThread != null) {
sleepingThread.interrupt();
}
});
}
private void setSleepingThread(#Nullable Thread sleepingThread) {
doWithinSleepingThreadLock(() -> this.sleepingThread = sleepingThread);
}
private void doWithinSleepingThreadLock(Runnable runnable) {
sleepingThreadLock.lock();
try {
runnable.run();
} finally {
sleepingThreadLock.unlock();
}
}
}
With this helper class, handling of the original problem is trivial:
void stop(boolean isUrgent) throws InterruptedException {
if (isUrgent) {sleepHandler.interruptIfSleeping();} //harmless if not sleeping
try {
doStop(isUrgent); //all the stuff in the original 'stop(...)' method
} catch (InteruptedException ignored) {
} finally {
Thread.interrupted(); //just in case, clearing the 'interrupt' flag as no need to propagate it futher
}

Thread methods deprecated [duplicate]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blocking queue and multi-threaded consumer, how to know when to stop

I have a single thread producer which creates some task objects which are then added into an ArrayBlockingQueue (which is of fixed size).
I also start a multi-threaded consumer. This is build as a fixed thread pool (Executors.newFixedThreadPool(threadCount);). I then submit some ConsumerWorker intances to this threadPool, each ConsumerWorker having a refference to the above mentioned ArrayBlockingQueue instance.
Each such Worker will do a take() on the queue and deal with the task.
My issue is, what's the best way to have a Worker know when there won't be any more work to be done. In other words, how do I tell the Workers that the producer has finished adding to the queue, and from this point on, each worker should stop when he sees that the Queue is empty.
What I've got now is a setup where my Producer is initialized with a callback which is triggered when he finishes it's job (of adding stuff to the queue). I also keep a list of all the ConsumerWorkers I've created and submitted to the ThreadPool. When the Producer Callback tells me that the producer is done, I can tell this to each of the workers. At this point they should simply keep checking if the queue is not empty, and when it becomes empty they should stop, thus allowing me to gracefully shutDown the ExecutorService thread pool. It's something like this
public class ConsumerWorker implements Runnable{
private BlockingQueue<Produced> inputQueue;
private volatile boolean isRunning = true;
public ConsumerWorker(BlockingQueue<Produced> inputQueue) {
this.inputQueue = inputQueue;
}
#Override
public void run() {
//worker loop keeps taking en element from the queue as long as the producer is still running or as
//long as the queue is not empty:
while(isRunning || !inputQueue.isEmpty()) {
System.out.println("Consumer "+Thread.currentThread().getName()+" START");
try {
Object queueElement = inputQueue.take();
//process queueElement
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
//this is used to signal from the main thread that he producer has finished adding stuff to the queue
public void setRunning(boolean isRunning) {
this.isRunning = isRunning;
}
}
The problem here is that I have an obvious race condition where sometimes the producer will finish, signal it, and the ConsumerWorkers will stop BEFORE consuming everything in the queue.
My question is what's the best way to synchronize this so that it all works ok? Should I synchronize the whole part where it checks if the producer is running plus if the queue is empty plus take something from the queue in one block (on the queue object)? Should I just synchronize the update of the isRunning boolean on the ConsumerWorker instance? Any other suggestion?
UPDATE, HERE'S THE WORKING IMPLEMENTATION THAT I'VE ENDED UP USING:
public class ConsumerWorker implements Runnable{
private BlockingQueue<Produced> inputQueue;
private final static Produced POISON = new Produced(-1);
public ConsumerWorker(BlockingQueue<Produced> inputQueue) {
this.inputQueue = inputQueue;
}
#Override
public void run() {
//worker loop keeps taking en element from the queue as long as the producer is still running or as
//long as the queue is not empty:
while(true) {
System.out.println("Consumer "+Thread.currentThread().getName()+" START");
try {
Produced queueElement = inputQueue.take();
Thread.sleep(new Random().nextInt(100));
if(queueElement==POISON) {
break;
}
//process queueElement
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
System.out.println("Consumer "+Thread.currentThread().getName()+" END");
}
}
//this is used to signal from the main thread that he producer has finished adding stuff to the queue
public void stopRunning() {
try {
inputQueue.put(POISON);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
This was inspired heavily by JohnVint's answer below, with only some minor modifications.
=== Update due to #vendhan's comment.
Thank you for your obeservation. You are right, the first snippet of code in this question has (amongst other issues) the one where the while(isRunning || !inputQueue.isEmpty()) doesn't really make sense.
In my actual final implementation of this, I do something which is closer to your suggestion of replacing "||" (or) with "&&" (and), in the sense that each worker (consumer) now only checks if the element he's got from the list is a poison pill, and if so stops (so theoretically we can say that the worker has to be running AND the queue must not be empty).

You should continue to take() from the queue. You can use a poison pill to tell the worker to stop. For example:
private final Object POISON_PILL = new Object();
#Override
public void run() {
//worker loop keeps taking en element from the queue as long as the producer is still running or as
//long as the queue is not empty:
while(isRunning) {
System.out.println("Consumer "+Thread.currentThread().getName()+" START");
try {
Object queueElement = inputQueue.take();
if(queueElement == POISON_PILL) {
inputQueue.add(POISON_PILL);//notify other threads to stop
return;
}
//process queueElement
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
//this is used to signal from the main thread that he producer has finished adding stuff to the queue
public void finish() {
//you can also clear here if you wanted
isRunning = false;
inputQueue.add(POISON_PILL);
}

I'd send the workers a special work packet to signal that they should shut down:
public class ConsumerWorker implements Runnable{
private static final Produced DONE = new Produced();
private BlockingQueue<Produced> inputQueue;
public ConsumerWorker(BlockingQueue<Produced> inputQueue) {
this.inputQueue = inputQueue;
}
#Override
public void run() {
for (;;) {
try {
Produced item = inputQueue.take();
if (item == DONE) {
inputQueue.add(item); // keep in the queue so all workers stop
break;
}
// process `item`
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
}
To stop the workers, simply add ConsumerWorker.DONE to the queue.

In your code-block where you attempt to retrive element from the queue , use poll(time,unit) instead of the take().
try {
Object queueElement = inputQueue.poll(timeout,unit);
//process queueElement
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
if(!isRunning && queue.isEmpty())
return ;
}
By specifying appropriate values of timeout , you ensure that threads wont keep blocking in case there is a unfortunate sequence of
isRunning is true
Queue becomes empty , so threads enter blocked wait ( if using take()
isRunning is set to false

Can not we do it using a CountDownLatch, where the size is the number of records in the producer. And every consumer will countDown after process a record. And its crosses the awaits() method when all tasks finished. Then stop all ur consumers. As all records are processed.

There are a number of strategies you could use, but one simple one is to have a subclass of task that signals the end of the job. The producer doesn't send this signal directly. Instead, it enqueues an instance of this task subclass. When one of your consumers pulls off this task and executes it, that causes the signal to be sent.

I had to use a multi-threaded producer and a multi-threaded consumer.
I ended up with a Scheduler -- N Producers -- M Consumers scheme, each two communicate via a queue (two queues total). The Scheduler fills the first queue with requests to produce data, and then fills it with N "poison pills". There is a counter of active producers (atomic int), and the last producer that receives the last poison pill sends M poison pills to the consumer queue.

Stopping looping thread in Java

I'm using a thread that is continuously reading from a queue.
Something like:
public void run() {
Object obj;
while(true) {
synchronized(objectsQueue) {
if(objectesQueue.isEmpty()) {
try {
objectesQueue.wait();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
obj = objectesQueue.poll();
}
}
// Do something with the Object obj
}
}
What is the best way to stop this thread?
I see two options:
1 - Since Thread.stop() is deprecated, I can implement a stopThisThread() method that uses a n atomic check-condition variable.
2 - Send a Death Event object or something like that to the queue. When the thread fetches a death event, it exits.
I prefer the 1st way, however, I don't know when to call the stopThisThread() method, as something might be on it's way to the queue and the stop signal can arrive first (not desirable).
Any suggestions?

The DeathEvent (or as it is often call, "poison pill") approach works well if you need to complete all of the work on the queue before shutting down. The problem is that this could take a long time.
If you want to stop as soon as possible, I suggest you do this
BlockingQueue<O> queue = ...
...
public void run() {
try {
// The following test is necessary to get fast interrupts. If
// it is replaced with 'true', the queue will be drained before
// the interrupt is noticed. (Thanks Tim)
while (!Thread.interrupted()) {
O obj = queue.take();
doSomething(obj);
}
} catch (InterruptedException ex) {
// We are done.
}
}
To stop the thread t that instantiated with that run method, simply call t.interrupt();.
If you compare the code above with other answers, you will notice how using a BlockingQueue and Thread.interrupt() simplifies the solution.
I would also claim that an extra stop flag is unnecessary, and in the big picture, potentially harmful. A well-behaved worker thread should respect an interrupt. An unexpected interrupt simply means that the worker is being run in a context that the original programmer did not anticipate. The best thing is if the worker to does what it is told to do ... i.e. it should stop ... whether or not this fits with the original programmer's conception.

Why not use a scheduler which you simply can stop when required? The standard scheduler supports repeated scheduling which also waits for the worker thread to finish before rescheduling a new run.
ScheduledExecutorService service = Executors.newSingleThreadScheduledExecutor();
service.scheduleWithFixedDelay(myThread, 1, 10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
this sample would run your thread with a delay of 10 sec, that means when one run finishes, it restarts it 10 seconds later. And instead of having to reinvent the wheel you get
service.shutdown()
the while(true) is not necessary anymore.
ScheduledExecutorService Javadoc

In your reader thread have a boolean variable stop. When you wish for this thread to stop set thius to true and interrupt the thread. Within the reader thread when safe (when you don't have an unprocessed object) check the status of the stop variable and return out of the loop if set. as per below.
public class readerThread extends Thread{
private volitile boolean stop = false;
public void stopSoon(){
stop = true;
this.interrupt();
}
public void run() {
Object obj;
while(true) {
if(stop){
return;
}
synchronized(objectsQueue) {
if(objectesQueue.isEmpty()) {
try {
objectesQueue.wait();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
if(stop){
return;
}
obj = objectesQueue.poll();
// Do something with the Object obj
}
}
}
}
public class OtherClass{
ThreadReader reader;
private void start(){
reader = ...;
reader.start();
}
private void stop(){
reader.stopSoon();
reader.join(); // Wait for thread to stop if nessasery.
}
}

Approach 1 is the preferred one.
Simply set a volatile stop field to true and call interrupt() on the running thread. This will force any I/O methods that wait to return with an InterruptedException (and if your library is written correctly this will be handled gracefully).

I think your two cases actually exhibit the same potential behavior. For the second case consider Thread A adds the DeathEvent after which Thread B adds a FooEvent. When your job Thread receives the DeathEvent there is still a FooEvent behind it, which is the same scenario you are describing in Option 1, unless you try to clear the queue before returning, but then you are essentially keeping the thread alive, when what you are trying to do is stop it.
I agree with you that the first option is more desirable. A potential solution would depend on how your queue is populated. If it is a part of your work thread class you could have your stopThisThread() method set a flag that would return an appropriate value (or throw Exception) from the enqueuing call i.e.:
MyThread extends Thread{
boolean running = true;
public void run(){
while(running){
try{
//process queue...
}catch(InterruptedExcpetion e){
...
}
}
}
public void stopThisThread(){
running = false;
interrupt();
}
public boolean enqueue(Object o){
if(!running){
return false;
OR
throw new ThreadNotRunningException();
}
queue.add(o);
return true;
}
}
It would then be the responsibility of the object attempting to enqueue the Event to deal with it appropriately, but at the least it will know that the event is not in the queue, and will not be processed.

I usually put a flag in the class that has the Thread in it and in my Thread code I would do. (NOTE: Instead of while(true) I do while(flag))
Then create a method in the class to set the flag to false;
private volatile bool flag = true;
public void stopThread()
{
flag = false;
}
public void run() {
Object obj;
while(flag) {
synchronized(objectsQueue) {
if(objectesQueue.isEmpty()) {
try {
objectesQueue.wait();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
obj = objectesQueue.poll();
}
}
// Do something with the Object obj
}
}