Usually, when you develop a simple, concurrent-programming application in Java, you create some Runnable objects and then create the corresponding Thread objects to execute them. If you have to develop a program that runs a lot of concurrent tasks, this approach has the following disadvantages:
- You have to implement all the code-related information to the management of the Thread objects (creation, ending, obtaining results).
- You create a Thread object per task. If you have to execute a big number of tasks, this can affect the throughput of the application.
- You have to control and manage efficiently the resources of the computer. If you create too many threads, you can saturate the system.
Since Java 5, the Java concurrency API provides a mechanism that aims at resolving problems. This mechanism is called the Executor framework and is around the Executor interface, its subinterface ExecutorService, and the ThreadPoolExecutor class that implements both interfaces.
Creating a thread executor
The first step to work with the Executor framework is to create an object of the ThreadPoolExecutor class. You can use the four constructors provided by that class or use a factory class named Executors that creates ThreadPoolExecutor. Once you have an executor, you can send Runnable or Callable objects to be executed.
public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) { ThreadPoolExecutor threadPool = (ThreadPoolExecutor) Executors.newCachedThreadPool();for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { threadPool.execute(new Runnable() { public void run() { System.out.println(Thread.currentThread().getName() + " is running. " + new Date()); } }); } threadPool.shutdown(); } }
The ThreadPoolExecutor class has four different constructors but, due to their complexity, the Java concurrency API provides the Executors class to construct executors and other related objects. Although we can create ThreadPoolExecutor directly using one of its constructors, it’s recommended to use the Executors class.
In this case, you have created a cached thread pool using the newCachedThreadPool() method. This method returns an ExecutorService object, so it’s been cast to ThreadPoolExecutor to have access to all its methods. The cached thread pool you have created creates new threads if needed to execute the new tasks, and reuses the existing ones if they have finished the execution of the task they were running, which are now available. The reutilization of threads has the advantage that it reduces the time taken for thread creation. The cached thread pool has, however, a disadvantage of constant lying threads for new tasks, so if you send too many tasks to this executor, you can overload the system. Use the executor created by the newCachedThreadPool() method only when you have a reasonable number of threads or when they have a short duration.
You also have printed some log messages with information about the executor. Specifically, you have used the following methods:
- getPoolSize(): This method returns the actual number of threads in the pool of the executor
- getActiveCount(): This method returns the number of threads that are executing tasks in the executor
- getCompletedTaskCount(): This method returns the number of tasks completed by the executor
- getLargestPoolSize(): This method returns the maximum number of threads that has been in the pool at a time
One critical aspect of the ThreadPoolExecutor class, and of the executors in general, is that you have to end it explicitly. If you don’t do this, the executor will continue its execution and the program won’t end. If the executor doesn’t have tasks to execute, it continues waiting for new tasks and it doesn’t end its execution. A Java application won’t end until all its non-daemon threads finish their execution, so, if you don’t terminate the executor, your application will never end.
To indicate to the executor that you want to finish it, you can use the shutdown() method of the ThreadPoolExecutor class. When the executor finishes the execution of all pending tasks, it finishes its execution. After you call the shutdown() method, if you try to send another task to the executor, it will be rejected and the executor will throw a RejectedExecutionException exception.
The ThreadPoolExecutor class also provides other methods related with the finalization of the executor. These methods are:
- shutdownNow(): This method shut downs the executor immediately. It doesn’t execute the pending tasks. It returns a list with all these pending tasks. The tasks that are running when you call this method continue with their execution, but the method doesn’t wait for their finalization.
- isTerminated(): This method returns true if you have called the shutdown() or shutdownNow() methods and the executor finishes the process of shutting it down.
- isShutdown(): This method returns true if you have called the shutdown() method of the executor.
- awaitTermination(long timeout, TimeUnit unit): This method blocks the calling thread until the tasks of the executor have ended or the timeout occurs. The TimeUnit class is an enumeration with the following constants: DAYS, HOURS, MICROSECONDS, MILLISECONDS, MINUTES, NANOSECONDS, and SECONDS. If you want to wait for the completion of the tasks, regardless of their duration, use a big timeout, for example, DAYS.
public static void main(String[] args) { ThreadPoolExecutor threadPool = (ThreadPoolExecutor) Executors.newCachedThreadPool(); for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { threadPool.execute(new Runnable() { public void run() { System.out.println(Thread.currentThread().getName() + " starts running. " + new Date()); try { TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep((long)(Math.random() * 10)); } catch (InterruptedException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } System.out.println(Thread.currentThread().getName() + " ends running. " + new Date()); } }); } threadPool.shutdown(); try { threadPool.awaitTermination(Long.MAX_VALUE, TimeUnit.DAYS); } catch (InterruptedException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } System.out.println("All tasks are completed. " + new Date()); }
Creating a fixed-size thread executor
When you use basic ThreadPoolExecutor created with the newCachedThreadPool() method of the Executors class, you can have a problem with the number of threads the executor is running at a time. The executor creates a new thread for each task that receives, (if there is no pooled thread free) so, if you send a large number of tasks and they have long duration, you can overload the system and provoke a poor performance of your application.
If you want to avoid this problem, the Executors class provides a method to create a fixed-size thread executor. This executor has a maximum number of threads. If you send more tasks than the number of threads, the executor won’t create additional threads and the remaining tasks will be blocked until the executor has a free thread. With this behavior, you guarantee that the executor won’t yield a poor performance of your application.
public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) { ThreadPoolExecutor threadPool = (ThreadPoolExecutor) Executors.newFixedThreadPool(3); for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { final int num = i + 1; threadPool.execute(new Runnable() { public void run() { System.out.printf("No.%d begins running. %s\n", num, new Date()); try { TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep((long)(Math.random() * 10)); } catch (InterruptedException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } System.out.printf("No.%d ends running. %s\n", num, new Date()); } }); } threadPool.shutdown(); try { threadPool.awaitTermination(Long.MAX_VALUE, TimeUnit.DAYS); } catch (InterruptedException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } System.out.println("All tasks are completed. " + new Date()); } }
In this case, you have used the newFixedThreadPool() method of the Executors class to create the executor. This method creates an executor with a maximum number of threads. If you send more tasks than the number of threads, the remaining tasks will be blocked until there is a free thread to process them. This method receives the maximum number of threads as a parameter you want to have in your executor. In your case, you have created an executor with three threads.
The following snippet shows part of the output of one execution of this example:
No.1 begins running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:25 CST 2016 No.0 begins running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:25 CST 2016 No.2 begins running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:25 CST 2016 No.0 ends running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:28 CST 2016 No.3 begins running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:28 CST 2016 No.3 ends running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:30 CST 2016 No.4 begins running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:30 CST 2016 No.1 ends running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:31 CST 2016 No.5 begins running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:31 CST 2016 No.5 ends running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:31 CST 2016 No.6 begins running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:31 CST 2016 No.6 ends running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:31 CST 2016 No.7 begins running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:31 CST 2016 No.2 ends running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:32 CST 2016 No.8 begins running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:32 CST 2016 No.8 ends running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:32 CST 2016 No.9 begins running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:32 CST 2016 No.4 ends running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:35 CST 2016 No.9 ends running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:39 CST 2016 No.7 ends running. Sat Nov 05 11:02:39 CST 2016 All tasks are completed. Sat Nov 05 11:02:39 CST 2016
The Executors class also provides the newSingleThreadExecutor() method. This is an extreme case of a fixed-size thread executor. It creates an executor with only one thread, so it can only execute one task at a time.
