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How to stop repeating myself in Java

I use a method for more than one time in JavaScript by using callback method because JavaScript is an async language.
Example:
function missionOne () {
sumCalculation(1, 2, function (result) {
console.log(result) // writes 3
})
}
function sumCalculation (param1, param2, callback) {
let result = param1 + param2
// The things that take long time can be done here
callback(result)
}
I wonder if there is any way to stop myself in Java?
Edit: I remove several sentences that make more complex the question.

I may be reading too much into your question, but it seems that you're looking into how to handle asynchronous code in Android. There are a couple of native options (not considering any library). I'll focus on two, but keep in mind there are other options.
AsyncTasks
From the documentation
AsyncTask enables proper and easy use of the UI thread. This class allows you to perform background operations and publish results on the UI thread without having to manipulate threads and/or handlers.
Before writing one, you need to know which type of parameters it will receive, the type of progress it will publish during computation and what is its return type. These types are define via the AsyncTask generic Parameters AsyncTask<Params,Progress,Result>. If you don't need them any of them, set them to Void
Here's the basic gist of using an AsyncTask to compute the sum of two ints:
public void sumCalculation (int param1, int param2, Callback callback) {
new AsyncTask<Integer, Void, Integer>() {
#Override
public Integer doInBackground(Integer... params) {
int result = 0;
for (Integer param : params) {
result += param;
}
return result;
}
#Override
protected void onPostExecute(Integer integer) {
super.onPostExecute(integer);
callback.onDone(integer);
}
}.execute(param1, param2);
}
doInBackground, as the name says, will execute a certain piece of code in a background thread. Please note that every AsyncTask will run on a ThreadPool of size 1, so they actually get in the way of other AsyncTasks.
onPostExecute brings the result back to the main thread, so you can update any UI componente. If you try to update the UI from a background thread, an exception will be thrown.
The down side of this particular example is the creation of a new AsyncTask every time that function is called.
Also you should use AsyncTask only if the task won't run for a very long time, couple of seconds at most.
Thread and Handler
Another option suggested on the documentation is using a thread and a handler to communicate between the main thread and a background thread. Although this provides greater flexibility, it also requires more responsibility as you will be responsible for managing the communication yourself, picking the right time to kill your threads and how to recover when something goes bad.
As a rule of thumb, you should only go this way if you really need the extra flexibility.
The overall idea is to create your own Handler and override its handleMessage method.
public class MyHandler {
#Override
public void handleMessage(Message inputMessage) {
int messageType = inputMessage.what;
Object extraData = inputMessage.obj;
...
}
}
public class MyTask extends Thread {
public static public int COMPUTATION_DONE = 0;
private MyHandler handler;
public MyTask(MyHandler handler) {
this.handler = handler;
}
#Override
public void run() {
//do your computation
Message message = handler.obtainMessage(COMPUTATION_DONE, your_result);
handler.sendMessage(message);
}
}
As you can see, this requiring parsing inputMessage.what and deciding what to do with it. Additionally, you need to cast inputMessage.obj to the right type and so on.
These are just two examples, but depending on what you're trying to do, you might need to dig deeper into Services or take a look at some reactive approach, such as RxJava2. However I encourage you to start with the basic before diving into something way more complicated.

Yes it is easy in Java. To take your example above you can write it in Java like this:
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println(sumCalc(1,2));
}
private int sumCalc(int first, int second) {
return first + second;
}

ListenableFuture callback execution order

Guava's ListenableFuture library provides a mechanism for adding callbacks to future tasks. This is done as follows:
ListenableFuture<MyClass> future = myExecutor.submit(myCallable);
Futures.addCallback(future, new FutureCallback<MyClass>() {
#Override
public void onSuccess(#Nullable MyClass myClass) {
doSomething(myClass);
}
#Override
public void onFailure(Throwable t) {
printWarning(t);
}}, myCallbackExecutor);
}
You can wait for a ListenableFuture to complete by calling its get function. For instance:
MyClass myClass = future.get();
My question is, are all callbacks for a certain future guaranteed to run before the get terminates. I.e. if there is a future with many callbacks on many callback executors registered, will all the callbacks complete before get returns?
Edit
My use case is, I pass a builder around to many classes. Each class populates one field of the builder. I want all fields to be populated asynchronously because each field requires an external query to generate the data for the field. I want the user who calls my asyncPopulateBuilder to receive a Future on which she can call get and be assured that all the fields have been populated. The way I thought to do it is as follows:
final Builder b;
ListenableFuture<MyClass> future = myExecutor.submit(myCallable);
Futures.addCallback(future, new FutureCallback<MyClass>() {
#Override
public void onSuccess(#Nullable MyClass myClass) {
b.setMyClass(myClass);
}
#Override
public void onFailure(Throwable t) {
printWarning(t);
}}, myCallbackExecutor);
}
// Do the same thing for all other fields.
What is the recommended way to block until all fields are populated in such a case?

Callbacks are not guaranteed to run before get returns. More on that below.
As for how to address this use case, I would suggest turning the query for each field's data into a separate Future, combining them with allAsList+transform, and taking action on that. (We may someday provide a shortcut for the "combine" step.)
ListenableFuture<MyClass> future = myExecutor.submit(myCallable);
final ListenableFuture<Foo> foo =
Futures.transform(
future,
new Function<MyClass, Foo>() { ... },
myCallbackExecutor);
final ListenableFuture<Bar> bar = ...;
final ListenableFuture<Baz> baz = ...;
ListenableFuture<?> allAvailable = Futures.allAsList(foo, bar, baz);
ListenableFuture<?> allSet = Futures.transform(
allAvailable,
new Function<Object, Object>() {
#Override
public Object apply(Object ignored) {
// Use getUnchecked, since we know they already succeeded:
builder.setFoo(Futures.getUnchecked(foo));
builder.setFoo(Futures.getUnchecked(bar));
builder.setFoo(Futures.getUnchecked(baz));
return null;
}
}
};
Now the user can call allSet.get() to await population.
(Or maybe you want for allSet to be a Future<Builder> so that the user is handed a reference to the builder. Or maybe you don't need a full-on Future at all, only a CountDownLatch, in which you could use addCallback instead of transform and count down the latch at the end of the callback.)
This approach may also simplify error handling.
RE: "Do callbacks run before get?"
First, I am pretty sure that we don't guarantee this anywhere in the spec, so thanks for asking rather than just going for it :) If you do end up wanting to rely on some behavior of the current implementation, please file an issue so that we can add documentation and tests.
Second, if I take your question very literally, what you're asking for isn't possible: If get() waits for all listeners to complete, then any listener that calls get() will hang!
A slightly more lenient version of your question is "Will all the listeners at least start before get() returns?" This turns out to be impossible, too: Suppose that I attach two listeners to the same Future to be run with directExecutor(). Both listeners simply call get() and return. One of the listeners has to run first. When it calls get(), it will hang, since the second listener hasn't started yet -- nor can it until the first listener is done. (More generally, it can be dangerous to rely on any given Executor to execute a task promptly.)
A still more lenient version is "Will the Future at least call submit() for each of the listeners before get() returns?" But this ends up with a problem in the same scenario as I just described: Calling submit(firstListener) on a directExecutor() runs the task and calls get(), which can't complete until the second listener is started, which can't happen until the first listener completes.
If anything, it's starting to sound much more likely that get() will return before any listeners execute. But thanks to the unpredictability of thread scheduling, we can't rely on that, either. (And again: It's not documented, so please don't rely on it unless you ask for it to be documented!)

final Builder b;
CountDownLatch latch = new CountDownLatch(1);
ListenableFuture<MyClass> future = myExecutor.submit(myCallable);
Futures.addCallback(future, new FutureCallback<MyClass>() {
#Override
public void onSuccess(#Nullable MyClass myClass) {
b.setMyClass(myClass);
latch.countDown();
}
#Override
public void onFailure(Throwable t) {
printWarning(t);
latch.countDown();
}, myCallbackExecutor);
try {
latch.await();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
LOG.error("something InterruptedException", e);
} finally {
myCallbackExecutor.shutdown();
}
Edit
code is inspired by #Chris Povirk
(Or maybe you want for allSet to be a Future so that the user is handed a reference to the builder. Or maybe you don't need a full-on Future at all, only a CountDownLatch, in which you could use addCallback instead of transform and count down the latch at the end of the callback.)
This approach may also simplify error handling.

JUnit test of a java asyncron method

Today I had to write a method which get a String as a parameter, make a new thread and write it out to the consol after 5 seconds waiting, so something like this:
public void exampleMethod(final String str){
Runnable myRunnable = new Runnable(){
public void run(){
try {
Thread.sleep(5000);
System.out.println(str);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
//handling of the exception
}
}
};
Thread thread = new Thread(myRunnable);
thread.start();
//some other things to do
}
My question is: How can I test and what should I test in here with JUnit?
Thank you!

There is nothing complex in this method. You are only using standard API-methods: Thread.sleep, System.out.println, ...
The parameter is just printed, you don't modify it nor use it for a calculation or another method.
There are no side-effects to your own written code, just to the STL.
And there is no result of the method, which you could test.
In my opinion it is not necessary and not simply possible to test it.
The only thing you could test (and even that wouldn't be trivial), is, if after an amount of time the String is printed.

[...] JUnit finishes execution while the thread is still alive. There could have been problems down the line, toward the end of that thread's execution, but your test would never reflect it.
The problem lies in JUnit's TestRunner. It isn't designed to look for Runnable instances and wait around to report on their activities. It fires them off and forgets about them. For this reason, multithreaded unit tests in JUnit have been nearly impossible to write and maintain.
Well, the source - this article - is from 2003 and there's no guarantee that this hasn't been fixed yet, but you may try it out yourself.
My suggestion would be:
Run your code and measure the time it takes. Then add some 1000 milliseconds and but a Thread.sleep(executionTime+1000); after you started you asynchronous task. Not that elegant, but should work in practice. If you want more elegance here (and waste less time), you may want to look for framework that provide a solution.
...Or if you start your Thread directly in the test, you may also use Thread.join to wait, but you will have cases, where you aren't able to do that.
EDIT:
Also check this article, which could provide a solution to pipe those errors to the main thread:
public class AsynchTester{
private Thread thread;
private volatile Error error;
private volatile RuntimeException runtimeExc;
public AsynchTester(final Runnable runnable) {
thread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
try {
runnable.run();
} catch (Error e) {
error = e;
} catch (RuntimeException e) {
runtimeExc = e;
}
}
});
}
public void start() {
thread.start();
}
public void test() throws InterruptedException {
thread.join();
if (error != null)
throw error;
if (runtimeExc != null)
throw runtimeExc;
}
}
Use it like that:
#Test
public void test() throws InterruptedException {
AsynchTester tester = new AsynchTester(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
//async code
}
});
tester.start();
tester.test();
}

The issue here is that you are trying to test an interaction instead of a simple returned result or a state change. However, that does not mean it can't be done.
The standard out PrintStream can be replaced with System.setOut(). You can inject your own mock implementation that would allow you verify that the String was written to the stream. You just have to be careful, since this changes the global state, it might effect other code or tests that rely on standard output. At a minimum, you will have to put back the original stream. But things might get more complicated if tests are running in parallel.
This takes us to the next issue, the sleep. There isn't a strong guarantee to how long a sleep will block. This means your test would have to provide some buffer to ensure that the thread had time to write the String before checking the state of the mock stream. You don't want your test to be flaky because of some execution timing jitter. So you would have to decide what buffer you would consider acceptable.
An alternative approach would be to change the implementation of the code so that it is easier to test.
The simplest way to do this is to remove all the static dependencies. Instead of explicitly referencing System.out, the class could be initialized with with an PrintStream to write to. Additionally, you could define an interface that would wrap Thread.sleep(). For testing purposes, you can initialize the class with the mock stream and no-op implementation of the sleep interface. However, you may still have some timing issues as you need the newly created thread to execute before continuing the test.
The other thing you can do is take a step back and decide how much you care about this code being tested. There are only 4 interesting lines of code in this sample and none of them are complicated. Having a code review could be sufficient to ensure there are no bugs.
However, if the business logic is more complicate than writing to standard out, you might decided that testing that is important. The good news is that scheduling a task in an executor is straight forward and that is the part that is making the testing hard. You could make an abstraction that encompasses the scheduling of the task in a background thread. Then provide yourself with more direct access to the business logic in order to test that.

I have often solved that, by providing a ResultTarget which implements an interface IResultTarget to the thread,
In productive code the result will be a list that contains the calculation result. (or null)
In your unit test the ResultTarget is the unit test class itself, which then easily can check the received result.
public Interface IResultTarget {
List getResult();
}
public void ThreadTest extends TestCase implements IResultTarget {
List result;
public List getResult(
return this.result;
}
public void testThread() {
MyRunnable myRunnable= new MyRunnable ();
myRunnable.setResultTarget(this);
Thread thread = new Thread(myRunnable);
thread .start();
Thread.sleep(5 * 1000);
// expecting one element as result of the work of myRunnable.
assertEquals(1, result.size());
}
}

How to signify failure of a Java Future result

AFAIK submitting Callable/Runnable to ExecutorService is the way to go if I want to execute resource-heavy code in parallel. Hence my method structure:
public class ServiceClass {
protected final ExecutorService executorService = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
public Future<Result> getResult(Object params) {
if (params == null) {
return null; // In situations like this the method should fail
}
// Do other fast pre-processing stuff
return executorService.submit(new CallProcessResult(params));
}
private class CallProcessResult implements Callable<Result> {
private Object params;
public CallProcessResult(Object params) {
this.params = params;
}
#Override
public Result call() throws Exception {
// Compute result for given params
// Failure may happen here too!
return result;
}
}
}
public class Result {
...
}
I have marked 2 spots in the code above in which failures can happen. The options available for error handling are quite different for those 2 cases.
Before submitting the task there can be issues like invalid parameters, some fast pre-processing code that may fail.
I see several ways to signify failure here:
In case of invalid params supplied to getResult return null immediately. In this case I'll have to check if getResult returned null every time I call it.
Throw checked exceptions instead of the above.
Instantiate a Future<Result> that returns null on get() request. I would do that with Apache Commons ConcurrentUtils.constantFuture(null). In this case I would expect getResult to always return some non-null Future<Result>. I like this option more, because it is consistent with the second case.
During task execution I can expect serious errors like lack of memory, corrupted files, unavailable files etc.
I suppose the better option in my case is to return null, because the result of the task is an object.
Also, I could throw checked exceptions and handle them in ThreadPoolExecutor.afterExecute (as suggested by NiranjanBhat). See Handling exceptions from Java ExecutorService tasks
Which is the better practice (in both cases)?
Perhaps there is a different way to do this or a design pattern I should use?

I would suggest that for failure during task processing, you simply throw an appropriate exception. Don't add any special handling for this in the executor. What will happen is that it will be captured, and stored in the Future. When the Future's get method is called, it will throw an ExecutionException, which the caller of get can then unpack and handle. This is essentially how normal exception handling is transposed into the Callable/Future paradigm. This looks like this:
Future<Result> futureResult = serviceClass.getResult("foo");
try {
Result result = futureResult.get();
// do something with result
}
catch (ExecutionException ee) {
Throwable e = ee.getCause();
// do something with e
}
Given that the caller of get has to have this handling of ExecutionExceptions, you could then take advantage of that to deal with failure during submission. To do this, you could construct a Future that is like Apache Commons's constantFuture, but which throws a given exception rather than returns a given value. I don't think there's anything like that in the JDK, but it's simple (if tedious) to write:
public class FailedFuture<T> implements Future<T> {
private final Throwable exception;
public FailedFuture(Throwable exception) {
this.exception = exception;
}
#Override
public T get() throws ExecutionException {
throw new ExecutionException(exception);
}
#Override
public T get(long timeout, TimeUnit unit) throws ExecutionException {
return get();
}
#Override public boolean cancel(boolean mayInterruptIfRunning) { return false; }
#Override public boolean isCancelled() { return false; }
#Override public boolean isDone() { return true; }
}
This is somewhat dodgy - you're taking a failure during a synchronously-called method, and making it look like a failure during the asynchronously-called method. You're shifting the burden of handling the error from the code that actually caused it to some code that runs later. Still, it does mean you can have all the failure handling code in one place; that might be enough of an advantage to make this worthwhile.

You can use afterExecute method. This is defined in the ThreadPoolExecutor, which you will need to override.
This method is called after the execution of each task is completed. You will get the task instance in this callback method. You can record the errors in some variable in your task and access it in this method.

How to wait for list of `Future`s created using different `ExecutorServices`

Ok, so I know the first answer / comment here will be "use one ExecutorService and use invokeAll". However, there is a good reason (which I will not bore people with) for us keeping the thread pools separate.
So I have a list of thread pools (ExecutorServices) and what I need to do is invoke a different Callable on each thread pool using submit (no problem there). Now I have this collection of Future instances, each created on a seperate ExecutorService, and I want to wait for all of them to complete (and be able to provide a timeout at which any not done are cancelled).
Is there an existing class that will do this (wrap a list of Future instances and allow for a wait till all are done)? If not, suggestions on an efficient mechanism would be appreciated.
Was thinking of calling get with a timeout for each but have to do a calculation of the total time passed for each call.
I saw this post Wait Until Any of Future is Done but this extends Future instead of wrapping a list of them.

Per Louis' comment, what I was looking for was Futures.successfulAsList
This allows me to wait for all to complete and then check for any futures that failed.
Guava RULES!

I don't think JDK provides a direct API that lets you do that. However, I think it is equally straightforward to create a simple method that does this. You might want to take a look at the implementation of AbstractExecutorService.invokeAll() to get an idea that this can be done.
Essentially, you would call future.get() on each future, decreasing the wait time by the time it took to wait for the result each time, and before returning from the method cancel all outstanding futures.

Maybe I didn't really get it. However, to me it still sounds as simple as
public <V> List<V> get(List<Future<V>> futures, long timeout, TimeUnit unit)
throws InterruptedException, ExecutionException, TimeoutException {
List<V> result = new ArrayList<V>();
long end = System.nanoTime() + unit.toNanos(timeout);
for (Future<V> f: futures) {
result.add(f.get(end - System.nanoTime(), TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS));
}
return result;
}
Am I wrong with that?
The question you link is much more complex I think, as they only want to wait for the fastest, and of course have no idea which will be the fastest.

This could use some cleanup, but it should solve your problem. (Some encapsulation omitted for time and space):
public static <T> LatchWithWrappedCallables<T> wrapCallables(Collection<Callable<T>> callablesToWrap)
{
CountDownLatch latch = new CountDownLatch(callablesToWrap.size());
List<Callable<T>> wrapped = new ArrayList<Callable<T>>(callablesToWrap.size());
for (Callable<T> currCallable : callablesToWrap)
{
wrapped.add(new CallableCountdownWrapper<T>(currCallable, latch));
}
LatchWithWrappedCallables<T> returnVal = new LatchWithWrappedCallables<T>();
returnVal.latch = latch;
returnVal.wrappedCallables = wrapped;
return returnVal;
}
public static class LatchWithWrappedCallables<T>
{
public CountDownLatch latch;
public Collection<Callable<T>> wrappedCallables;
}
public static class CallableCountdownWrapper<T> implements Callable<T>
{
private final Callable<T> wrapped;
private final CountDownLatch latch;
public CallableCountdownWrapper(Callable<T> wrapped, CountDownLatch latch)
{
this.wrapped = wrapped;
this.latch = latch;
}
#Override
public T call() throws Exception
{
try
{
return wrapped.call();
}
finally
{
latch.countDown();
}
}
}
Then your code would call it like this:
Collection<Callable<String>> callablesToWrap = [Your callables that you need to wait for here];
LatchWithWrappedCallables<String> latchAndCallables = wrapCallables(callablesToWrap);
[Submit the wrapped callables to the executors here]
if(latchAndCallables.latch.await(timeToWaitInSec, TimeUnit.SECONDS))
{
[Handling for timeout here]
}