How to set a Timer, say for 2 minutes, to try to connect to a Database then throw exception if there is any issue in connection?
So the first part of the answer is how to do what the subject asks as this was how I initially interpreted it and a few people seemed to find helpful. The question was since clarified and I've extended the answer to address that.
Setting a timer
First you need to create a Timer (I'm using the java.util version here):
import java.util.Timer;
..
Timer timer = new Timer();
To run the task once you would do:
timer.schedule(new TimerTask() {
#Override
public void run() {
// Your database code here
}
}, 2*60*1000);
// Since Java-8
timer.schedule(() -> /* your database code here */, 2*60*1000);
To have the task repeat after the duration you would do:
timer.scheduleAtFixedRate(new TimerTask() {
#Override
public void run() {
// Your database code here
}
}, 2*60*1000, 2*60*1000);
// Since Java-8
timer.scheduleAtFixedRate(() -> /* your database code here */, 2*60*1000, 2*60*1000);
Making a task timeout
To specifically do what the clarified question asks, that is attempting to perform a task for a given period of time, you could do the following:
ExecutorService service = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
try {
Runnable r = new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
// Database task
}
};
Future<?> f = service.submit(r);
f.get(2, TimeUnit.MINUTES); // attempt the task for two minutes
}
catch (final InterruptedException e) {
// The thread was interrupted during sleep, wait or join
}
catch (final TimeoutException e) {
// Took too long!
}
catch (final ExecutionException e) {
// An exception from within the Runnable task
}
finally {
service.shutdown();
}
This will execute normally with exceptions if the task completes within 2 minutes. If it runs longer than that, the TimeoutException will be throw.
One issue is that although you'll get a TimeoutException after the two minutes, the task will actually continue to run, although presumably a database or network connection will eventually time out and throw an exception in the thread. But be aware it could consume resources until that happens.
Use this
long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
long elapsedTime = 0L.
while (elapsedTime < 2*60*1000) {
//perform db poll/check
elapsedTime = (new Date()).getTime() - startTime;
}
//Throw your exception
Ok, I think I understand your problem now. You can use a Future to try to do something and then timeout after a bit if nothing has happened.
E.g.:
FutureTask<Void> task = new FutureTask<Void>(new Callable<Void>() {
#Override
public Void call() throws Exception {
// Do DB stuff
return null;
}
});
Executor executor = Executors.newSingleThreadScheduledExecutor();
executor.execute(task);
try {
task.get(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}
catch(Exception ex) {
// Handle your exception
}
new java.util.Timer().schedule(new TimerTask(){
#Override
public void run() {
System.out.println("Executed...");
//your code here
//1000*5=5000 mlsec. i.e. 5 seconds. u can change accordngly
}
},1000*5,1000*5);
[Android] if someone looking to implement timer on android using java.
you need use UI thread like this to perform operations.
Timer timer = new Timer();
timer.schedule(new TimerTask() {
#Override
public void run() {
ActivityName.this.runOnUiThread(new Runnable(){
#Override
public void run() {
// do something
}
});
}
}, 2000));
How would I create a thread that will execute after a delay of s seconds?
I would like other processes to run while the thread is waiting.
For example, I would like to create the thread, then print out several other strings, then after s seconds, the thread will run.
What I don't need is the whole program to wait for s seconds, then everything happens. I need processes to run while the delay is ticking.
Thanks!
~Java preferred
Use a ScheduledExecutorService. See the example below.
System.out.println("some stuff");
ScheduledExecutorService scheduler = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(1);
final Runnable task = new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
System.out.println("do something");
}
};
Future<?> futureHandle = scheduler.scheduleWithFixedDelay(task, 10, 10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
System.out.println("some other stuff");
The task is scheduled with a fixed delay of 10 seconds, so you'll get output for the print statements not in the Runnable followed by the one in the Runnable every 10 seconds.
The output in this example is
some stuff
some other stuff
do something
do something
...
with the "do something" lines occurring at 10 sec. intervals after an initial 10 sec. delay.
To stop it, you can create a "stop" task to put some kind of logic in, and register that.
final Runnable stopTask = new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
futureHandle.cancel(true); // true: interrupt if necessary
}
};
long delay = // some number, how long to wait before invoking the stop task
scheduler.schedule(stopTask, delay, TimeUnit.SECONDS).get(); // wait if necessary and get the future result
scheduler.shutdown(); // shutdown on completion
EDIT
If you just need the task to run once, as pointed out in the comments, consider a TimerTask:
final Timer timer = new Timer();
final TimerTask task = new TimerTask() {
#Override
public void run() {
System.out.println("timer task");
timer.cancel(); // stop timer after execution
}
};
timer.schedule(task, 1000); // schedule task with delay of 1000ms
I would suggest you to take look into quartz scheduler. This is very powerful and does almost similar tasks like unix cron in java environment.
There are bunch of tutorials online for quartz that you can always look into.
Here is one working example with Thread.sleep():
public class DelayThread implements Runnable {
private final int DELAY;
public DelayThread(int delay) {
this.DELAY = delay;
}
#Override
public void run() {
try {
Thread.sleep(DELAY);
System.out.println("task executed");
} catch (InterruptedException ex) {
System.out.println("interrupted");
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
Thread thread1 = new Thread(new DelayThread(2000));
thread1.start();
Thread.sleep(500);
Thread thread2 = new Thread(new DelayThread(2000));
thread2.start();
System.out.println("All threads are started");
}
}
We need to implement a feature that allows us to cancel a future job. Given that this job is doing DB calls and we need to rollback\cleanup any updates made before cancel was fired.
This is what I have tried, but "Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()" always return false:
ScheduledExecutorService executor = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(1);
final Future future = executor.submit(new Callable() {
#Override
public Boolean call() throws Exception {
// Do Some DB calls
if (Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) {
// Will need to roll back
throw new InterruptedException();
}
return true;
}
});
executor.schedule(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
future.cancel(true);
}
}, 1, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
Is this the right approach to achieve our target? And how to know if the job was cancelled in order to cancel\roll back changes?
I believe that you complete the database calls before the second task gets a chance to run. When you have only a single executor it is possible that it does not schedule time for the second scheduled task before the first completes. This following snippet does get interrupted:
import java.util.*;
import java.util.concurrent.*;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] arg) {
ScheduledExecutorService runner = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(2);
// If this is 1 then this will never be interrupted.
final Future f = runner.submit(new Callable<Boolean>() {
public Boolean call() throws Exception {
System.out.println("Calling");
while (! Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted()) {
;
}
System.out.println("Interrupted");
return true;
}
});
runner.schedule(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
System.out.println("Interrupting");
f.cancel(true);
}
}, 1, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}
}
First it seems the thread pool is not creating new thread for you so your cancel task will get called only after the DB task finishes. So I changed the pool size in yours example to 2 and it worked.
I'm using a 3rd party function (say runThird()) that has a tendency to loop indefinitely and has no timeout facility built in. However, I can kill it (killThird()). Is there a proper way to do this (i.e. some concurrency construct)?
Here's my attempt at this:
java.lang.Thread thread = new Thread(new Runnable(){
#Override
public void run(){
try {
Thread.sleep(TIMEOUT);
} catch (java.lang.InterruptedException e){
return;
}
killThird();
}
});
thread.start();
RunThirdResult rtr = runThird();
if (thread != null){
thread.interrupt();
}
But I'm not sure I like the overhead of creating a thread, using sleep and the contrivance of interrupting the thread if runThird() returns.
Let's assume runThird() retuns Integer ...
// ... in your class ...
private ExecutorService executor = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
//... then somewhere, where you want to call runThird()
Future<Integer> handle = executor.submit( new Callable<Integer>(){
#Override Integer call(){
return runThird(); // Assume you made it available here ...
}
}
Integer result;
try{
result = handle.get(TIMEOUT,UNIT); // TIMEOUT and UNIT declared somewhere above ...
}
catch(TimeoutException ex) {
killThird();
// HANDLE result not being set!
}
// ... use result.
I would use a ScheduledExecutorService for this. Schedule it to be killed.
volatile RunThirdResult rtr;
ScheduledExecutorService service = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(1);
service.schedule(new Runnable(){
public void run(){
if(rtr == null) killThird();
}
}, TIMEOUT_IN_MILLIS, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
RunThirdResult rtr = runThird();
Something like that? The most interesting part is StoppableWrapper#stop(), cause graceful cancellation is a hard thing and there's no common approach for all cases. One time you need to clear filesystem, other time to close network connection, etc. In your sample, you just call interrupt(), so I assumed runThird() honors being interrupted and will take care to clean things behind itself.
class Sample {
final ExecutorService tasksExecutor = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
class StoppableWrapper implements Runnable {
private final Runnable task;
private final CountDownLatch executed;
StoppableWrapper(Runnable task, CountDownLatch executed) {
this.task = task;
this.executed = executed;
}
void stop() {
// e.g. Thread.currentThread().interrupt()
}
#Override
public void run() {
task.run();
executed.countDown();
}
}
public void scheduleTimingOutTaskExecution(final long timeout) {
final CountDownLatch executed = new CountDownLatch(1);
final StoppableWrapper command = new StoppableWrapper(new RunThirdInstance(), executed);
tasksExecutor.execute(command);
tasksExecutor.execute(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
try {
if (!executed.await(timeout, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)) {
command.stop();
// additionally, you can make stop() return boolean after time-out as well and handle failure
}
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
// handle stopper exception here
}
}
});
}
}
Is it possible to force Java to throw an Exception after some block of code runs longer than acceptable?
Here's the simplest way that I know of to do this:
final Runnable stuffToDo = new Thread() {
#Override
public void run() {
/* Do stuff here. */
}
};
final ExecutorService executor = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
final Future future = executor.submit(stuffToDo);
executor.shutdown(); // This does not cancel the already-scheduled task.
try {
future.get(5, TimeUnit.MINUTES);
}
catch (InterruptedException ie) {
/* Handle the interruption. Or ignore it. */
}
catch (ExecutionException ee) {
/* Handle the error. Or ignore it. */
}
catch (TimeoutException te) {
/* Handle the timeout. Or ignore it. */
}
if (!executor.isTerminated())
executor.shutdownNow(); // If you want to stop the code that hasn't finished.
Alternatively, you can create a TimeLimitedCodeBlock class to wrap this functionality, and then you can use it wherever you need it as follows:
new TimeLimitedCodeBlock(5, TimeUnit.MINUTES) { #Override public void codeBlock() {
// Do stuff here.
}}.run();
I compiled some of the other answers into a single utility method:
public class TimeLimitedCodeBlock {
public static void runWithTimeout(final Runnable runnable, long timeout, TimeUnit timeUnit) throws Exception {
runWithTimeout(new Callable<Object>() {
#Override
public Object call() throws Exception {
runnable.run();
return null;
}
}, timeout, timeUnit);
}
public static <T> T runWithTimeout(Callable<T> callable, long timeout, TimeUnit timeUnit) throws Exception {
final ExecutorService executor = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
final Future<T> future = executor.submit(callable);
executor.shutdown(); // This does not cancel the already-scheduled task.
try {
return future.get(timeout, timeUnit);
}
catch (TimeoutException e) {
//remove this if you do not want to cancel the job in progress
//or set the argument to 'false' if you do not want to interrupt the thread
future.cancel(true);
throw e;
}
catch (ExecutionException e) {
//unwrap the root cause
Throwable t = e.getCause();
if (t instanceof Error) {
throw (Error) t;
} else if (t instanceof Exception) {
throw (Exception) t;
} else {
throw new IllegalStateException(t);
}
}
}
}
Sample code making use of this utility method:
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
final long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
log(startTime, "calling runWithTimeout!");
try {
TimeLimitedCodeBlock.runWithTimeout(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
try {
log(startTime, "starting sleep!");
Thread.sleep(10000);
log(startTime, "woke up!");
}
catch (InterruptedException e) {
log(startTime, "was interrupted!");
}
}
}, 5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}
catch (TimeoutException e) {
log(startTime, "got timeout!");
}
log(startTime, "end of main method!");
}
private static void log(long startTime, String msg) {
long elapsedSeconds = (System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime);
System.out.format("%1$5sms [%2$16s] %3$s\n", elapsedSeconds, Thread.currentThread().getName(), msg);
}
Output from running the sample code on my machine:
0ms [ main] calling runWithTimeout!
13ms [ pool-1-thread-1] starting sleep!
5015ms [ main] got timeout!
5016ms [ main] end of main method!
5015ms [ pool-1-thread-1] was interrupted!
Yes, but its generally a very bad idea to force another thread to interrupt on a random line of code. You would only do this if you intend to shutdown the process.
What you can do is to use Thread.interrupt() for a task after a certain amount of time. However, unless the code checks for this it won't work. An ExecutorService can make this easier with Future.cancel(true)
Its much better for the code to time itself and stop when it needs to.
If it is test code you want to time, then you can use the time attribute:
#Test(timeout = 1000)
public void shouldTakeASecondOrLess()
{
}
If it is production code, there is no simple mechanism, and which solution you use depends upon whether you can alter the code to be timed or not.
If you can change the code being timed, then a simple approach is is to have your timed code remember it's start time, and periodically the current time against this. E.g.
long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
// .. do stuff ..
long elapsed = System.currentTimeMillis()-startTime;
if (elapsed>timeout)
throw new RuntimeException("tiomeout");
If the code itself cannot check for timeout, you can execute the code on another thread, and wait for completion, or timeout.
Callable<ResultType> run = new Callable<ResultType>()
{
#Override
public ResultType call() throws Exception
{
// your code to be timed
}
};
RunnableFuture<ResultType> future = new FutureTask<>(run);
ExecutorService service = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
service.execute(future);
ResultType result = null;
try
{
result = future.get(1, TimeUnit.SECONDS); // wait 1 second
}
catch (TimeoutException ex)
{
// timed out. Try to stop the code if possible.
future.cancel(true);
}
service.shutdown();
}
I can suggest two options.
Within the method, assuming it is looping and not waiting for an external event, add a local field and test the time each time around the loop.
void method() {
long endTimeMillis = System.currentTimeMillis() + 10000;
while (true) {
// method logic
if (System.currentTimeMillis() > endTimeMillis) {
// do some clean-up
return;
}
}
}
Run the method in a thread, and have the caller count to 10 seconds.
Thread thread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
method();
}
});
thread.start();
long endTimeMillis = System.currentTimeMillis() + 10000;
while (thread.isAlive()) {
if (System.currentTimeMillis() > endTimeMillis) {
// set an error flag
break;
}
try {
Thread.sleep(500);
}
catch (InterruptedException t) {}
}
The drawback to this approach is that method() cannot return a value directly, it must update an instance field to return its value.
EDIT: Peter Lawrey is completely right: it's not as simple as interrupting a thread (my original suggestion), and Executors & Callables are very useful ...
Rather than interrupting threads, you could set a variable on the Callable once the timeout is reached. The callable should check this variable at appropriate points in task execution, to know when to stop.
Callables return Futures, with which you can specify a timeout when you try to 'get' the future's result. Something like this:
try {
future.get(timeoutSeconds, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
} catch(InterruptedException e) {
myCallable.setStopMeAtAppropriatePlace(true);
}
See Future.get, Executors, and Callable ...
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/Future.html#get-long-java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit-
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/Callable.html
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/Executors.html#newFixedThreadPool%28int%29
I created a very simple solution without using any frameworks or APIs. This looks more elegant and understandable. The class is called TimeoutBlock.
public class TimeoutBlock {
private final long timeoutMilliSeconds;
private long timeoutInteval=100;
public TimeoutBlock(long timeoutMilliSeconds){
this.timeoutMilliSeconds=timeoutMilliSeconds;
}
public void addBlock(Runnable runnable) throws Throwable{
long collectIntervals=0;
Thread timeoutWorker=new Thread(runnable);
timeoutWorker.start();
do{
if(collectIntervals>=this.timeoutMilliSeconds){
timeoutWorker.stop();
throw new Exception("<<<<<<<<<<****>>>>>>>>>>> Timeout Block Execution Time Exceeded In "+timeoutMilliSeconds+" Milli Seconds. Thread Block Terminated.");
}
collectIntervals+=timeoutInteval;
Thread.sleep(timeoutInteval);
}while(timeoutWorker.isAlive());
System.out.println("<<<<<<<<<<####>>>>>>>>>>> Timeout Block Executed Within "+collectIntervals+" Milli Seconds.");
}
/**
* #return the timeoutInteval
*/
public long getTimeoutInteval() {
return timeoutInteval;
}
/**
* #param timeoutInteval the timeoutInteval to set
*/
public void setTimeoutInteval(long timeoutInteval) {
this.timeoutInteval = timeoutInteval;
}
}
example :
try {
TimeoutBlock timeoutBlock = new TimeoutBlock(10 * 60 * 1000);//set timeout in milliseconds
Runnable block=new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
//TO DO write block of code to execute
}
};
timeoutBlock.addBlock(block);// execute the runnable block
} catch (Throwable e) {
//catch the exception here . Which is block didn't execute within the time limit
}
This was so much useful for me when i had to connect to a FTP account. Then download and upload stuff. sometimes FTP connection hangs or totally breaks. This caused whole system to go down. and i needed a way to detect it and prevent it from happening . So i created this and used it. Works pretty well.
I faced a similar kind of issue where my task was to push a message to SQS within a particular timeout. I used the trivial logic of executing it via another thread and waiting on its future object by specifying the timeout. This would give me a TIMEOUT exception in case of timeouts.
final Future<ISendMessageResult> future =
timeoutHelperThreadPool.getExecutor().submit(() -> {
return getQueueStore().sendMessage(request).get();
});
try {
sendMessageResult = future.get(200, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
logger.info("SQS_PUSH_SUCCESSFUL");
return true;
} catch (final TimeoutException e) {
logger.error("SQS_PUSH_TIMEOUT_EXCEPTION");
}
But there are cases where you can't stop the code being executed by another thread and you get true negatives in that case.
For example - In my case, my request reached SQS and while the message was being pushed, my code logic encountered the specified timeout. Now in reality my message was pushed into the Queue but my main thread assumed it to be failed because of the TIMEOUT exception.
This is a type of problem which can be avoided rather than being solved. Like in my case I avoided it by providing a timeout which would suffice in nearly all of the cases.
If the code you want to interrupt is within you application and is not something like an API call then you can simply use
future.cancel(true)
However do remember that java docs says that it does guarantee that the execution will be blocked.
"Attempts to cancel execution of this task. This attempt will fail if the task has already completed, has already been cancelled,or could not be cancelled for some other reason. If successful,and this task has not started when cancel is called,this task should never run. If the task has already started,then the mayInterruptIfRunning parameter determines whether the thread executing this task should be interrupted inan attempt to stop the task."
If you want a CompletableFuture way you could have a method like
public MyResponseObject retrieveDataFromEndpoint() {
CompletableFuture<MyResponseObject> endpointCall
= CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(() ->
yourRestService.callEnpoint(withArg1, withArg2));
try {
return endpointCall.get(10, TimeUnit.MINUTES);
} catch (TimeoutException
| InterruptedException
| ExecutionException e) {
throw new RuntimeException("Unable to fetch data", e);
}
}
If you're using spring, you could annotate the method with a #Retryable so that it retries the method three times if an exception is thrown.
Instead of having the task in the new thread and the timer in the main thread, have the timer in the new thread and the task in the main thread:
public static class TimeOut implements Runnable{
public void run() {
Thread.sleep(10000);
if(taskComplete ==false) {
System.out.println("Timed Out");
return;
}
else {
return;
}
}
}
public static boolean taskComplete = false;
public static void main(String[] args) {
TimeOut timeOut = new TimeOut();
Thread timeOutThread = new Thread(timeOut);
timeOutThread.start();
//task starts here
//task completed
taskComplete =true;
while(true) {//do all other stuff }
}
There is a hacky way to do it.
Set some boolean field to indicate whether the work was completed. Then before the block of code, set a timer to run a piece of code after your timeout. The timer will check if the block of code had finished executing, and if not, throw an exception. Otherwise it will do nothing.
The end of the block of code should, of course, set the field to true to indicate the work was done.
There's a very simple option that nobody's mentioned yet:
Duration timeout = Duration.ofMinutes(5);
Thread thread = new Thread(() -> {
// your code here
});
thread.start();
thread.join(timeout.toMillis());
if (thread.isAlive()) {
thread.interrupt();
throw new MyTimeoutException();
}
If the thread running your code block fails to complete within the timeout, it is interrupted and whatever exception you want can be thrown.
It is possible to write code that will simply ignore the interruption and carry on. If you're dealing with this can cannot fix it then there is thread.stop(), but that can break any synchronisation mechanisms that you are relying on. See its deprecation notice.
You can also capture exceptions from the thread:
AtomicReference<Throwable> uncaughtException = new AtomicReference<>();
thread.setUncaughtExceptionHandler((t, ex) -> uncaughtException.setRelease(ex));
// ...
Throwable ex = uncaughtException.getAcquire();
if (ex != null) {
throw ex;
}
I had this problem too, my logs print out with ‘’Unexpected end of stream‘’.and ‘’Could not get a resource from the pool‘’，
I set the timeout of brpop to 30s, redis to 31s, and mysql database connection pool to 300s. For now, this error is not printed on the log, but I don't know if this error will be reported in the future.I don't know if it has a bad effect on my writing to the database