I'm having troubles trying to stop my program that has multiple threads running, all threads running are trying to find the same solution but once one thread finds the solution all other threads are to stop.
In the main method I have created a thread group and add threads to it using a for loop and start them
ThreadGroup tg = new ThreadGroup("thread group");
Thread th;
for(int i = 0; i<4; i++){
th = new Thread(tg, new Runnable(), "Thread " + i)
th.start();
}
in the class that implements Runnable I am having troubles trying to figure out how to make it so that once one of the thread finds a solution all the threads will stop. What ends up happening is that either the other threads keep running and sometimes the threads will interupt each other and write over each other.
You have to interrupt those thread (and handle interruption in the runnable). I also not sure if you should use ThreadGroup - I remember seeing a Sonar warning about them.
You would perhaps better have to an ExecutorService and do that using a CountDownLatch (that's one way to do that):
ExecutorService es = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(100);
CountDownLatch cdl = new CountDownLatch(1);
for (int i = 0; i < 100; ++i) {
es.submit(() -> {
Thread.sleep(TimeUnit.SECONDS.toMillis(30)); // + exception handling
cdl.countDown();
});
}
cdl.await(); // or await(5, TimeUnit.MINUTES);
es.shutdownNow();
The trick is:
You create an ExecutorService with a pool of 100 threads.
You create a CoundDownLatch - a barrier - with a count of 1.
You submit your task which, when their job is done, invoke cdl.countDown(); reducing the counter from 1 to 0.
The parent thread wait for the CountDownLatch to reduce to 0 - you should probably use the second version (to block until 5 minutes for example).
If all Runnable fails, you won't have a result: either use a maximum await time, either you could add another CountDownLatch, this time with a count of 100 (the number of threads), countDown() in a try/finally, and in another thread, interrupt the one awaiting on the cdl. You could also do that in a loop:
CountDownLatch allCdl = new CountDownLatch(100);
for (;allCdl.getCount() != 0;) {
if (!cdl.await(60, TimeUnit.SECONDS)) {
if (allCdl.getCount() == 0) {
break;
}
}
}
However, the javadoc of getCount() mention that This method is typically used for debugging and testing purposes. (see CyclicBarrier). Not sure if this is the correct usage.
Upon realizing that a solution has been found, the victorious thread should signal the parent – which then signals all other children to stop, or simply kills them.
ThreadGroup tg = new ThreadGroup("thread group");
CountDownLatch latch = new CountDownLatch(1);
AtomicInteger result = new AtomicInteger();
Random random = new Random();
for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
Thread th = new Thread(tg, () -> {
try {
Thread.sleep(random.nextInt(10000));
result.set(42);
latch.countDown();
System.out.println(Thread.currentThread().getName() + " completed task first");
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
System.out.println(Thread.currentThread().getName() + " was interrupted before it could finish the task");
}
}, "Thread " + i);
th.start();
}
while (latch.getCount() > 0) {
try {
latch.await();
} catch (InterruptedException ignored) {
}
}
tg.interrupt();
System.out.println("The result is " + result.get());
This example shows how to wait until a thread finishes.
You need to make sure your action is interruptible. Thread.sleep as shown in this example is interrubtible by default. See oracle docs for more info.
Also note that it is impossible to guarantee that all other threads will be interrupted before they complete. If you need to make sure to handle only one result, synchronize the access to your result variable and discard any changes beyond the first.
Imagine the following program.
class Main {
static class Whatever {
int x = 0;
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
Whatever whatever = new Whatever();
Thread t = new Thread(() -> {
whatever.x = 1;
});
t.start();
try {
t.join();
}
catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
System.out.println(whatever.x);
}
}
The main-thread has cached whatever and x is set to 0. The other thread starts, caches whatever and sets the cached x to 1.
The output is
1
so the main-thread has seen the write. Why is that?
Why was the write done to the shared cache and why has the main-thread invalidated its cache to read from the shared cache? Why don't I need volatile here?
Because of the main thread joining on it. See
17.4.5 in the JLS:
All actions in a thread happen-before any other thread successfully returns from a join() on that thread.
Btw it is true that not having a happens-before doesn’t necessarily mean something won’t be visible.
public class RunTest {
public static int counter = 0;
static class RunnerDec implements Runnable{
public void run(){
for(int i=0;i<5000; i++){
counter--;
}
}
}
static class RunnerInc implements Runnable{
public void run(){
for(int i=0;i<5000; i++){
counter++;
}
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
RunnerDec rd = new RunnerDec();
RunnerInc ri = new RunnerInc();
Thread t1 = new Thread(rd);
Thread t2 = new Thread(ri);
t1.start();
t2.start();
try{
t1.join(); // this will stop the main thread until t1 is done incrementing 5000 times
t2.join(); // this will stop the main thread until t2 is done incrementing 5000 times
}catch(Exception e){
e.printStackTrace();
}
System.out.println(counter);
}
}
I expect the result to be 0 every time alas this is not the case. The java doc says join() "waits for this thread to die". I feel like the main thread should wait for t1 to finish then wait for t2 to finish. That's not what is happening. Thanks for the clarity!!
It does wait for the threads to die. But your two threads concurrently update a shared variable without any synchronization, so you're seeing race conditions and visibility issues.
For example:
counter = 1000
thread 1 reads counter : 1000
thread 2 reads counter : 1000
thread 1 increments and writes counter: 1001
thread 2 decrements and writes counter: 999
Since ++ and -- are not atomic operations, the above thread interlacing example loses an increment.
The easiest way to fix them is to use an AtomicInteger rather than an int. To understand the crux of the problem, you'd better read Java Concurrency in Practice, or at the very least the Java concurrency tutorial.
I was trying to implement something similar to Java's bounded BlockingQueue interface using Java synchronization "primitives" (synchronized, wait(), notify()) when I stumbled upon some behavior I don't understand.
I create a queue capable of storing 1 element, create two threads that wait to fetch a value from the queue, start them, then try to put two values into the queue in a synchronized block in the main thread. Most of the time it works, but sometimes the two threads waiting for a value start seemingly waking up each other and not letting the main thread enter the synchronized block.
Here's my (simplified) code:
import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.Queue;
public class LivelockDemo {
private static final int MANY_RUNS = 10000;
public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
for (int i = 0; i < MANY_RUNS; i++) { // to increase the probability
final MyBoundedBlockingQueue ctr = new MyBoundedBlockingQueue(1);
Thread t1 = createObserver(ctr, i + ":1");
Thread t2 = createObserver(ctr, i + ":2");
t1.start();
t2.start();
System.out.println(i + ":0 ready to enter synchronized block");
synchronized (ctr) {
System.out.println(i + ":0 entered synchronized block");
ctr.addWhenHasSpace("hello");
ctr.addWhenHasSpace("world");
}
t1.join();
t2.join();
System.out.println();
}
}
public static class MyBoundedBlockingQueue {
private Queue<Object> lst = new LinkedList<Object>();;
private int limit;
private MyBoundedBlockingQueue(int limit) {
this.limit = limit;
}
public synchronized void addWhenHasSpace(Object obj) throws InterruptedException {
boolean printed = false;
while (lst.size() >= limit) {
printed = __heartbeat(':', printed);
notify();
wait();
}
lst.offer(obj);
notify();
}
// waits until something has been set and then returns it
public synchronized Object getWhenNotEmpty() throws InterruptedException {
boolean printed = false;
while (lst.isEmpty()) {
printed = __heartbeat('.', printed); // show progress
notify();
wait();
}
Object result = lst.poll();
notify();
return result;
}
// just to show progress of waiting threads in a reasonable manner
private static boolean __heartbeat(char c, boolean printed) {
long now = System.currentTimeMillis();
if (now % 1000 == 0) {
System.out.print(c);
printed = true;
} else if (printed) {
System.out.println();
printed = false;
}
return printed;
}
}
private static Thread createObserver(final MyBoundedBlockingQueue ctr,
final String name) {
return new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
try {
System.out.println(name + ": saw " + ctr.getWhenNotEmpty());
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace(System.err);
}
}
}, name);
}
}
Here's what I see when it "blocks":
(skipped a lot)
85:0 ready to enter synchronized block
85:0 entered synchronized block
85:2: saw hello
85:1: saw world
86:0 ready to enter synchronized block
86:0 entered synchronized block
86:2: saw hello
86:1: saw world
87:0 ready to enter synchronized block
............................................
..........................................................................
..................................................................................
(goes "forever")
However, if I change the notify() calls inside the while(...) loops of addWhenHasSpace and getWhenNotEmpty methods to notifyAll(), it "always" passes.
My question is this: why does the behavior vary between notify() and notifyAll() methods in this case, and also why is the behavior of notify() the way it is?
I would expect both methods to behave in the same way in this case (two threads WAITING, one BLOCKED), because:
it seems to me that in this case notifyAll() would only wake up the other thread, same as notify();
it looks like the choice of the method which wakes up a thread affects how the thread that is woken up (and becomes RUNNABLE I guess) and the main thread (that has been BLOCKED) later compete for the lock — not something I would expect from the javadoc as well as searching the internet on the topic.
Or maybe I'm doing something wrong altogether?
Without looking too deeply into your code, I can see that you are using a single condition variable to implement a queue with one producer and more than one consumer. That's a recipe for trouble: If there's only one condition variable, then when a consumer calls notify(), there's no way of knowing whether it will wake the producer or wake the other consumer.
There are two ways out of that trap: The simplest is to always use notifyAll().
The other way is to stop using synchronized, wait(), and notify(), and instead use the facilities in java.util.concurrent.locks.
A single ReentrantLock object can give you two (or more) condition variables. Use one exclusively for the producer to notify the consumers, and use the other exclusively for the consumers to notify the producer.
Note: The names change when you switch to using ReentrantLocks: o.wait() becomes c.await(), and o.notify() becomes c.signal().
There appears to be some kind of fairness/barging going on using intrinsic locking - probably due to some optimization. I am guessing, that the native code checks to see if the current thread has notified the monitor it is about to wait on and allows it to win.
Replace the synchronized with ReentrantLock and it should work as you expect it. The different here is how the ReentrantLock handles waiters of a lock it has notified on.
Update:
Interesting find here. What you are seeing is a race between the main thread entering
synchronized (ctr) {
System.out.println(i + ":0 entered synchronized block");
ctr.addWhenHasSpace("hello");
ctr.addWhenHasSpace("world");
}
while the other two thread enter their respective synchronized regions. If the main thread does not get into its sync region before at least one of the two, you will experience this live-lock output you are describing.
What appears to be happening is that if both the two consumer threads hit the sync block first they will ping-pong with each other for notify and wait. It may be the case the JVM gives threads that are waiting priority to the monitor while threads are blocked.
I'm writing an application that has 5 threads that get some information from web simultaneously and fill 5 different fields in a buffer class.
I need to validate buffer data and store it in a database when all threads finished their job.
How can I do this (get alerted when all threads finished their work) ?
The approach I take is to use an ExecutorService to manage pools of threads.
ExecutorService es = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
for(int i=0;i<5;i++)
es.execute(new Runnable() { /* your task */ });
es.shutdown();
boolean finished = es.awaitTermination(1, TimeUnit.MINUTES);
// all tasks have finished or the time has been reached.
You can join to the threads. The join blocks until the thread completes.
for (Thread thread : threads) {
thread.join();
}
Note that join throws an InterruptedException. You'll have to decide what to do if that happens (e.g. try to cancel the other threads to prevent unnecessary work being done).
Have a look at various solutions.
join() API has been introduced in early versions of Java. Some good alternatives are available with this concurrent package since the JDK 1.5 release.
ExecutorService#invokeAll()
Executes the given tasks, returning a list of Futures holding their status and results when everything is completed.
Refer to this related SE question for code example:
How to use invokeAll() to let all thread pool do their task?
CountDownLatch
A synchronization aid that allows one or more threads to wait until a set of operations being performed in other threads completes.
A CountDownLatch is initialized with a given count. The await methods block until the current count reaches zero due to invocations of the countDown() method, after which all waiting threads are released and any subsequent invocations of await return immediately. This is a one-shot phenomenon -- the count cannot be reset. If you need a version that resets the count, consider using a CyclicBarrier.
Refer to this question for usage of CountDownLatch
How to wait for a thread that spawns it's own thread?
ForkJoinPool or newWorkStealingPool() in Executors
Iterate through all Future objects created after submitting to ExecutorService
Wait/block the Thread Main until some other threads complete their work.
As #Ravindra babu said it can be achieved in various ways, but showing with examples.
java.lang.Thread.join() Since:1.0
public static void joiningThreads() throws InterruptedException {
Thread t1 = new Thread( new LatchTask(1, null), "T1" );
Thread t2 = new Thread( new LatchTask(7, null), "T2" );
Thread t3 = new Thread( new LatchTask(5, null), "T3" );
Thread t4 = new Thread( new LatchTask(2, null), "T4" );
// Start all the threads
t1.start();
t2.start();
t3.start();
t4.start();
// Wait till all threads completes
t1.join();
t2.join();
t3.join();
t4.join();
}
java.util.concurrent.CountDownLatch Since:1.5
.countDown() « Decrements the count of the latch group.
.await() « The await methods block until the current count reaches zero.
If you created latchGroupCount = 4 then countDown() should be called 4 times to make count 0. So, that await() will release the blocking threads.
public static void latchThreads() throws InterruptedException {
int latchGroupCount = 4;
CountDownLatch latch = new CountDownLatch(latchGroupCount);
Thread t1 = new Thread( new LatchTask(1, latch), "T1" );
Thread t2 = new Thread( new LatchTask(7, latch), "T2" );
Thread t3 = new Thread( new LatchTask(5, latch), "T3" );
Thread t4 = new Thread( new LatchTask(2, latch), "T4" );
t1.start();
t2.start();
t3.start();
t4.start();
//latch.countDown();
latch.await(); // block until latchGroupCount is 0.
}
Example code of Threaded class LatchTask. To test the approach use joiningThreads();
and latchThreads(); from main method.
class LatchTask extends Thread {
CountDownLatch latch;
int iterations = 10;
public LatchTask(int iterations, CountDownLatch latch) {
this.iterations = iterations;
this.latch = latch;
}
#Override
public void run() {
String threadName = Thread.currentThread().getName();
System.out.println(threadName + " : Started Task...");
for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++) {
System.out.println(threadName + " : " + i);
MainThread_Wait_TillWorkerThreadsComplete.sleep(1);
}
System.out.println(threadName + " : Completed Task");
// countDown() « Decrements the count of the latch group.
if(latch != null)
latch.countDown();
}
}
CyclicBarriers A synchronization aid that allows a set of threads to all wait for each other to reach a common barrier point.CyclicBarriers are useful in programs involving a fixed sized party of threads that must occasionally wait for each other. The barrier is called cyclic because it can be re-used after the waiting threads are released.
CyclicBarrier barrier = new CyclicBarrier(3);
barrier.await();
For example refer this Concurrent_ParallelNotifyies class.
Executer framework: we can use ExecutorService to create a thread pool, and tracks the progress of the asynchronous tasks with Future.
submit(Runnable), submit(Callable) which return Future Object. By using future.get() function we can block the main thread till the working threads completes its work.
invokeAll(...) - returns a list of Future objects via which you can obtain the results of the executions of each Callable.
Find example of using Interfaces Runnable, Callable with Executor framework.
#See also
Find out thread is still alive?
Apart from Thread.join() suggested by others, java 5 introduced the executor framework. There you don't work with Thread objects. Instead, you submit your Callable or Runnable objects to an executor. There's a special executor that is meant to execute multiple tasks and return their results out of order. That's the ExecutorCompletionService:
ExecutorCompletionService executor;
for (..) {
executor.submit(Executors.callable(yourRunnable));
}
Then you can repeatedly call take() until there are no more Future<?> objects to return, which means all of them are completed.
Another thing that may be relevant, depending on your scenario is CyclicBarrier.
A synchronization aid that allows a set of threads to all wait for each other to reach a common barrier point. CyclicBarriers are useful in programs involving a fixed sized party of threads that must occasionally wait for each other. The barrier is called cyclic because it can be re-used after the waiting threads are released.
Another possibility is the CountDownLatch object, which is useful for simple situations : since you know in advance the number of threads, you initialize it with the relevant count, and pass the reference of the object to each thread.
Upon completion of its task, each thread calls CountDownLatch.countDown() which decrements the internal counter. The main thread, after starting all others, should do the CountDownLatch.await() blocking call. It will be released as soon as the internal counter has reached 0.
Pay attention that with this object, an InterruptedException can be thrown as well.
You do
for (Thread t : new Thread[] { th1, th2, th3, th4, th5 })
t.join()
After this for loop, you can be sure all threads have finished their jobs.
Store the Thread-objects into some collection (like a List or a Set), then loop through the collection once the threads are started and call join() on the Threads.
You can use Threadf#join method for this purpose.
Although not relevant to OP's problem, if you are interested in synchronization (more precisely, a rendez-vous) with exactly one thread, you may use an Exchanger
In my case, I needed to pause the parent thread until the child thread did something, e.g. completed its initialization. A CountDownLatch also works well.
I created a small helper method to wait for a few Threads to finish:
public static void waitForThreadsToFinish(Thread... threads) {
try {
for (Thread thread : threads) {
thread.join();
}
}
catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
An executor service can be used to manage multiple threads including status and completion. See http://programmingexamples.wikidot.com/executorservice
try this, will work.
Thread[] threads = new Thread[10];
List<Thread> allThreads = new ArrayList<Thread>();
for(Thread thread : threads){
if(null != thread){
if(thread.isAlive()){
allThreads.add(thread);
}
}
}
while(!allThreads.isEmpty()){
Iterator<Thread> ite = allThreads.iterator();
while(ite.hasNext()){
Thread thread = ite.next();
if(!thread.isAlive()){
ite.remove();
}
}
}
I had a similar problem and ended up using Java 8 parallelStream.
requestList.parallelStream().forEach(req -> makeRequest(req));
It's super simple and readable.
Behind the scenes it is using default JVM’s fork join pool which means that it will wait for all the threads to finish before continuing. For my case it was a neat solution, because it was the only parallelStream in my application. If you have more than one parallelStream running simultaneously, please read the link below.
More information about parallel streams here.
The existing answers said could join() each thread.
But there are several ways to get the thread array / list:
Add the Thread into a list on creation.
Use ThreadGroup to manage the threads.
Following code will use the ThreadGruop approach. It create a group first, then when create each thread specify the group in constructor, later could get the thread array via ThreadGroup.enumerate()
Code
SyncBlockLearn.java
import org.testng.Assert;
import org.testng.annotations.Test;
/**
* synchronized block - learn,
*
* #author eric
* #date Apr 20, 2015 1:37:11 PM
*/
public class SyncBlockLearn {
private static final int TD_COUNT = 5; // thread count
private static final int ROUND_PER_THREAD = 100; // round for each thread,
private static final long INC_DELAY = 10; // delay of each increase,
// sync block test,
#Test
public void syncBlockTest() throws InterruptedException {
Counter ct = new Counter();
ThreadGroup tg = new ThreadGroup("runner");
for (int i = 0; i < TD_COUNT; i++) {
new Thread(tg, ct, "t-" + i).start();
}
Thread[] tArr = new Thread[TD_COUNT];
tg.enumerate(tArr); // get threads,
// wait all runner to finish,
for (Thread t : tArr) {
t.join();
}
System.out.printf("\nfinal count: %d\n", ct.getCount());
Assert.assertEquals(ct.getCount(), TD_COUNT * ROUND_PER_THREAD);
}
static class Counter implements Runnable {
private final Object lkOn = new Object(); // the object to lock on,
private int count = 0;
#Override
public void run() {
System.out.printf("[%s] begin\n", Thread.currentThread().getName());
for (int i = 0; i < ROUND_PER_THREAD; i++) {
synchronized (lkOn) {
System.out.printf("[%s] [%d] inc to: %d\n", Thread.currentThread().getName(), i, ++count);
}
try {
Thread.sleep(INC_DELAY); // wait a while,
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
System.out.printf("[%s] end\n", Thread.currentThread().getName());
}
public int getCount() {
return count;
}
}
}
The main thread will wait for all threads in the group to finish.
I had similar situation , where i had to wait till all child threads complete its execution then only i could get the status result for each of them .. hence i needed to wait till all child thread completed.
below is my code where i did multi-threading using
public static void main(String[] args) {
List<RunnerPojo> testList = ExcelObject.getTestStepsList();//.parallelStream().collect(Collectors.toList());
int threadCount = ConfigFileReader.getInstance().readConfig().getParallelThreadCount();
System.out.println("Thread count is : ========= " + threadCount); // 5
ExecutorService threadExecutor = new DriverScript().threadExecutor(testList, threadCount);
boolean isProcessCompleted = waitUntilCondition(() -> threadExecutor.isTerminated()); // Here i used waitUntil condition
if (isProcessCompleted) {
testList.forEach(x -> {
System.out.println("Test Name: " + x.getTestCaseId());
System.out.println("Test Status : " + x.getStatus());
System.out.println("======= Test Steps ===== ");
x.getTestStepsList().forEach(y -> {
System.out.println("Step Name: " + y.getDescription());
System.out.println("Test caseId : " + y.getTestCaseId());
System.out.println("Step Status: " + y.getResult());
System.out.println("\n ============ ==========");
});
});
}
Below method is for distribution of list with parallel proccessing
// This method will split my list and run in a parallel process with mutliple threads
private ExecutorService threadExecutor(List<RunnerPojo> testList, int threadSize) {
ExecutorService exec = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(threadSize);
testList.forEach(tests -> {
exec.submit(() -> {
driverScript(tests);
});
});
exec.shutdown();
return exec;
}
This is my wait until method: here you can wait till your condition satisfies within do while loop . in my case i waited for some max timeout .
this will keep checking until your threadExecutor.isTerminated() is true with polling period of 5 sec.
static boolean waitUntilCondition(Supplier<Boolean> function) {
Double timer = 0.0;
Double maxTimeOut = 20.0;
boolean isFound;
do {
isFound = function.get();
if (isFound) {
break;
} else {
try {
Thread.sleep(5000); // Sleeping for 5 sec (main thread will sleep for 5 sec)
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
timer++;
System.out.println("Waiting for condition to be true .. waited .." + timer * 5 + " sec.");
}
} while (timer < maxTimeOut + 1.0);
return isFound;
}
Use this in your main thread: while(!executor.isTerminated());
Put this line of code after starting all the threads from executor service. This will only start the main thread after all the threads started by executors are finished. Make sure to call executor.shutdown(); before the above loop.