How to handle RejectedExecutionException with ThreadPoolExecutor in java - java

What is the best way to handle RejectedExecutionException while using a ThreadPoolExecutor in Java?
I want to ensure that the task submitted should not be overlooked and should surely get executed. As of now there are no hard real time requirements to get the task done.
One of the things I thought could be done was waiting in a loop till I know that there is space in the runnable queue, and then go on and add it to the queue.
Would be glad if people can share their experiences.
Adding the possible solution I though of:
while(executor.getQueue().remainingCapacity <= 0){
// keep looping
Thread.sleep(100);
};
//if the loop exits ,indicates that we have space in the queue hence
//go ahead and add to the queue
executor.execute(new ThreadInstance(params));

I would change the behaviour of your queue. e.g.
public class MyBlockingQueue<E> extends ArrayBlockingQueue<E> {
private final long timeoutMS;
public MyBlockingQueue(int capacity, long timeoutMS) {
super(capacity);
this.timeoutMS = timeoutMS;
}
#Override
public boolean offer(E e) {
try {
return super.offer(e, timeoutMS, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
} catch (InterruptedException e1) {
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
return false;
}
}
}
This will wait for the queue to drain before giving up.

If you have constrained your thread pool to only allow a certain number of concurrent threads (generally a good thing), then the application needs to somehow push-back on the calling code, so when you receive a RejectedExecutionException from the ThreadPoolExecutor you need to indicate this to the caller and the caller will need to handle the retry.
An analogous situation is a web server under heavy load. A client connects, the web server should return a 503 - Service Unavailable (generally a temporary condition) and the client decides what to do about it.

Related

Do while loop behaving unexpectedly, for some inexplicable reason

I've been all over the internet and the Java docs regarding this one; I can't seem to figure out what it is about do while loops I'm not understanding. Here's the background: I have some message handler code that takes some JSON formatted data from a REST endpoint, parses it into a runnable task, then adds this task to a linked blocking queue for processing by the worker thread. Meanwhile, on the worker thread, I have this do while loop to process the message tasks:
do {
PublicTask currentTask = pubMsgQ.poll();
currentTask.run();
} while(pubMsgQ.size() > 0);
pubMsgQ is a LinkedBlockingQueue<PublicTask> (PublicTask implements the Runnable interface). I can't see any problems with this loop (obviously, or else I wouldn't be here), but this is how it behaves during execution: Upon entering the do block, pubMsgQ is polled and returns the runnable task as expected. The task is then run successfully with expected results, but then we get to the while statement. Now, according to the Java docs, poll() should return and remove the head of the queue, so I should expect that pubMsgQ.size() will return 0, right? Wrong I guess, because somehow the while statement passes and the program enters the do block again; of course this time pubMsgQ.poll() returns null (as I would have expected it should) and the program crashes with NullPointerException. What? Please explain like I'm five...
EDIT:
I decided to leave my original post as is above; because I think I actually explain the undesired behavior of that specific piece of the code quite succinctly (the loop is being executed twice while I'm fairly certain there is no way the loop should be executing twice). However, I realize that probably doesn't give enough context for that loop's existence and purpose in the first place, so here is the complete breakdown for what I am actually trying to accomplish with this code as I am sure there is a better way to implement this altogether anyways.
What this loop is actually a part of is a message handler class which implements the MessageHandler interface belonging to my Client Endpoint class [correction from my previous post; I had said the messages coming in were JSON formatted strings from a REST endpoint. This is technically not true: they are JSON formatted strings being received through a web socket connection. Note that while I am using the Spring framework, this is not a STOMP client; I am only using the built-in javax WebSocketContainer as this is more lightweight and easier for me to implement]. When a new message comes in onMessage() is called, which passes the JSON string to the MessageHandler; so here is the code for the entire MessageHandler class:
public class MessageHandler implements com.innotech.gofish.AutoBrokerClient.MessageHandler {
private LinkedBlockingQueue<PublicTask> pubMsgQ = new LinkedBlockingQueue<PublicTask>();
private LinkedBlockingQueue<AuthenticatedTask> authMsgQ = new LinkedBlockingQueue<AuthenticatedTask>();
private MessageLooper workerThread;
private CyclicBarrier latch = new CyclicBarrier(2);
private boolean running = false;
private final boolean authenticated;
public MessageHandler(boolean authenticated) {
this.authenticated = authenticated;
}
#Override
public void handleMessage(String msg) {
try {
//Create new Task and submit it to the message queue:
if(authenticated) {
AuthenticatedTask msgTsk = new AuthenticatedTask(msg);
authMsgQ.put(msgTsk);
} else {
PublicTask msgTsk = new PublicTask(msg);
pubMsgQ.put(msgTsk);
}
//Check status of worker thread:
if(!running) {
workerThread = new MessageLooper();
running = true;
workerThread.start();
} else if(running && !workerThread.active) {
latch.await();
latch.reset();
}
} catch(InterruptedException | BrokenBarrierException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
private class MessageLooper extends Thread {
boolean active = false;
public MessageLooper() {
}
#Override
public synchronized void run() {
while(running) {
active = true;
if(authenticated) {
do {
AuthenticatedTask currentTask = authMsgQ.poll();
currentTask.run();
if(GoFishApplication.halt) {
GoFishApplication.reset();
}
} while(authMsgQ.size() > 0);
} else {
do {
PublicTask currentTask = pubMsgQ.poll();
currentTask.run();
} while(pubMsgQ.size() > 0);
}
try {
active = false;
latch.await();
} catch (InterruptedException | BrokenBarrierException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
}
}
You may probably see where I'm going with this...what this Gerry-rigged code is trying to do is act as a facsimile for the Looper class provided by the Android Development Kit. The actual desired behavior is as messages are received, the handleMessage() method adds the messages to the queue for processing and the messages are processed on the worker thread separately as long as there are messages to process. If there are no more messages to process, the worker thread waits until it is notified by the handler that more messages have been received; at which point it resumes processing those messages until the queue is once again empty. Rinse and repeat until the user stops the program.
Of course, the closest thing the JDK provides to this is the ThreadPoolExecutor (which I know is probably the actual proper way to implement this); but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to for this exact case. Finally, as a quick aside so I can be sure to explain everything fully, The reason why there are two queues (and a public and authenticated handler) is because there are two web socket connections. One is an authenticated channel for sending/receiving private messages; the other is un-authenticated and used only to send/receive public messages. There should be no interference, however, given that the authenticated status is final and set at construction; and each Client Endpoint is passed it's own Handler which is instantiated at the time of server connection.
You appear to have a number of concurrency / threading bugs in your code.
Assumptions:
It looks like there could be multiple MessageHandler objects, each with its own pair of queues and (supposedly) at most one MessageLooper thread. It also looks as if a given MessageHandler could be used by multiple request worker threads.
If that is the case, then one problem is that MessageHandler is not thread-safe. Specifically, the handleMessage is accessing and updating fields of the MessageHandler instance without doing any synchronization.
Some of the fields are initialized during object creation and then never changed. They are probably OK. (But you should declare them as final to be sure!) But some of the variables are supposed to change during operation, and they must be handled correctly.
One section that rings particular alarm bells is this:
if (!running) {
workerThread = new MessageLooper();
running = true;
workerThread.start();
} else if (running && !workerThread.active) {
latch.await();
latch.reset();
}
Since this is not synchronized, and the variables are not volatile:
There are race conditions if two threads call this code simultaneously; e.g. between testing running and assigning true to it.
If one thread sets running to true, there are no guarantees that a second thread will see the new value.
The net result is that you could potentially get two or more MessageLooper threads for a given set of queues. That breaks your assumptions in the MessageLooper code.
Looking at the MessageLooper code, I see that you have declared the run method as synchronized. Unfortunately, that doesn't help. The problem is that the run method will be synchronizing on this ... which is the specific instance of MessageLooper. And it will acquire the lock once and release it once. On short, the synchronized is wrong.
(For Java synchronized methods and synchronized blocks to work properly, 1) the threads involved need to synchronize on the same object (i.e. the same primitive lock), and 2) all read and write operations on the state guarded by the lock need to be done while holding the lock. This applies to use of Lock objects as well.)
So ...
There is no synchronization between a MessageLooper thread and any other threads that are adding to or removing from the queues.
There are no guarantees that the MessageLooper thread will notice changes to the running flag.
As I previously noted, you could have two or more MessageLooper polling the same pair of queues.
In short, there are lots of possible explanations for strange behavior in the code in the Question. This includes the specific problem you noticed with the queue size.
Writing correct multi-threaded code is difficult. This is why you should be using an ExecutorService rather than attempting to roll your own code.
But it you do need to roll your own concurrency code, I recommend buying and reading "Java: Concurrency in Practice" by Brian Goetz et al. It is still the only good textbook on this topic ...

How to be sure that a #scheduled task terminates?

inside a Spring web application I have a scheduled task that is called every five minutes.
#Scheduled(fixedDelay = 300000)
public void importDataTask()
{
importData(); //db calls, file manipulations, etc..
}
Usually the task runs smoothly for days, but sometimes happens that the example method importaData()will not terminate, so importDataTask()will not be called again and everything will be blocked until I restart the application.
The question is: is there a feasibile method to be sure that a method will not be indefinitely blocked (waybe waiting for a resource, or something else)?
The question is: is there a feasibile method to be sure that a method
will not be indefinitely blocked (waybe waiting for a resource, or
something else)?
If the scheduling cannot be planned at a precise regular interval, you should maybe not use a fixed delay but use two conditions : delay + last execution done.
You could schedule a task which checks if the two conditions are met and if it the case, you run the important processing. Otherwise, it waits for the next schedule.
In this way, you should not be blocked. You could wait for some time if the task exceeds the fixed delay. If it is a problem because the fixed delay is often exceeded, you should probably not use a fixed delay or so you should increase sensitively it in order that it is less common.
Here an example (writing without editor. Sorry if any mistake) :
private boolean isLastImportDataTaskFinished;
#Scheduled(fixedDelay = 300000)
public void importDataTaskManager(){
if (isLastImportDataTaskFinished()){
new Thread(new ImportantDataProcessing())).start();
}
else{
// log the problem if you want
}
}
private isLastImportDataTaskFinished(){
// to retrieve this information, you can do as you want : use a variable
// in this class or a data in database,file...
// here a simple implementation
return isLastImportDataTaskFinished;
}
Runnable class :
public class ImportantDataProcessing implements Runnable{
public void run(){
importData(); //db calls, file manipulations, etc..
}
}
Comment:
But if I run it as a thread how can I kill it if I find it's exceeding
the time limit since I don't have any reference to it (in the idea of
using a second task to determine the stuck state)?
You can use an ExecutorService (you have a question about it here : How to timeout a thread).
Here a very simple example :
ExecutorService executor = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
Future future = executor.submit(new ImportantDataProcessing());
try {
future.get(100, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}
catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
catch (ExecutionException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
catch (TimeoutException e) {
// the timeout to handle but other exceptions should be handled :)
e.printStackTrace();
}
executor.shutdown();
If interesting information may be returned by ImportantDataProcessing processing , you can use a task instead of a runnable instance to type the future.
Firstly, sure. There are many feasibile methods to remind you if the process is blocked, such as log/message/email which embed in you code.
Secondly, it is decided by if you want it block or not. If block is not you intention, new thread or timeout may be you choice.

Best practice for interrupting threads that take longer than a threshold

I am using the Java ExecutorService framework to submit callable tasks for execution.
These tasks communicate with a web service and a web service timeout of 5 mins is applied.
However I've seen that in some cases the timeout is being ignored and thread 'hangs' on an API call - hence, I want to cancel all the tasks that take longer than say, 5 mins.
Currently, I have a list of futures and I iterate through them and call future.get until all tasks are complete. Now, I've seen that the future.get overloaded method takes a timeout and throws a timeout when the task doesnt complete in that window. So I thought of an approach where I do a future.get() with timeout and in case of TimeoutException I do a future.cancel(true) to make sure that this task is interrupted.
My main questions
1. Is the get with a timeout the best way to solve this issue?
2. Is there the possibility that I'm waiting with the get call on a task that hasnt yet been placed on the thread pool(isnt an active worker). In that case I may be terminating a thread that, when it starts may actually complete within the required time limit?
Any suggestions would be deeply appreciated.
Is the get with a timeout the best way to solve this issue?
This will not suffice. For instance, if your task is not designed to response to interruption, it will keep on running or be just blocked
Is there the possibility that I'm waiting with the get call on a task that hasnt yet been placed on the thread pool(isnt an active worker). In that case I may be terminating a thread that, when it starts may actually complete within the required time limit?
Yes, You might end up cancelling as task which is never scheduled to run if your thread-pool is not configured properly
Following code snippet could be one of the way you can make your task responsive to interruption when your task contains Non-interruptible Blocking. Also it does not cancel the task which are not scheduled to run. The idea here is to override interrupt method and close running tasks by say closing sockets, database connections etc. This code is not perfect and you need to make changes as per requirements, handle exceptions etc.
class LongRunningTask extends Thread {
private Socket socket;
private volatile AtomicBoolean atomicBoolean;
public LongRunningTask() {
atomicBoolean = new AtomicBoolean(false);
}
#Override
public void interrupt() {
try {
//clean up any resources, close connections etc.
socket.close();
} catch(Throwable e) {
} finally {
atomicBoolean.compareAndSet(true, false);
//set the interupt status of executing thread.
super.interrupt();
}
}
public boolean isRunning() {
return atomicBoolean.get();
}
#Override
public void run() {
atomicBoolean.compareAndSet(false, true);
//any long running task that might hang..for instance
try {
socket = new Socket("0.0.0.0", 5000);
socket.getInputStream().read();
} catch (UnknownHostException e) {
} catch (IOException e) {
} finally {
}
}
}
//your task caller thread
//map of futures and tasks
Map<Future, LongRunningTask> map = new HashMap<Future, LongRunningTask>();
ArrayList<Future> list = new ArrayList<Future>();
int noOfSubmittedTasks = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
LongRunningTask task = new LongRunningTask();
Future f = execService.submit(task);
map.put(f, task);
list.add(f);
noOfSubmittedTasks++;
}
while(noOfSubmittedTasks > 0) {
for(int i=0;i < list.size();i++) {
Future f = list.get(i);
LongRunningTask task = map.get(f);
if (task.isRunning()) {
/*
* This ensures that you process only those tasks which are run once
*/
try {
f.get(5, TimeUnit.MINUTES);
noOfSubmittedTasks--;
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
} catch (ExecutionException e) {
} catch (TimeoutException e) {
//this will call the overridden interrupt method
f.cancel(true);
noOfSubmittedTasks--;
}
}
}
}
execService.shutdown();
Is the get with a timeout the best way to solve this issue?
Yes it is perfectly fine to get(timeout) on a Future object, if the task that the future points to is already executed it will return immediately. If the task is yet to be executed or is being executed then it will wait until timeout and is a good practice.
Is there the possibility that I'm waiting with the get call on a task
that hasnt yet been placed on the thread pool(isnt an active worker)
You get Future object only when you place a task on the thread pool so it is not possible to call get() on a task without placing it on thread pool. Yes there is a possibility that the task has not yet been taken by a free worker.
The approach that you are talking about is ok. But most importantly before setting a threshold on the timeout you need to know what is the perfect value of thread pool size and timiout for your environment. Do a stress testing which will reveal whether the no of worker threads that you configured as part of Threadpool is fine or not. And this may even reduce the timeout value. So this test is most important i feel.
Timeout on get is perfectly fine but you should add to cancel the task if it throws TimeoutException. And if you do the above test properly and set your thread pool size and timeout value to ideal than you may not even need to cancel tasks externally (but you can have this as backup). And yes sometimes in canceling a task you may end up canceling a task which is not yet picked up by the Executor.
You can of course cancel a Task by using
task.cancel(true)
It is perfectly legal. But this will interrupt the thread if it is "RUNNING".
If the thread is waiting to acquire an intrinsic lock then the "interruption" request has no effect other than setting the thread's interrupted status. In this case you cannot do anything to stop it. For the interruption to happen, the thread should come out from the "blocked" state by acquiring the lock it was waiting for (which may take more than 5 mins). This is a limitation of using "intrinsic locking".
However you can use explicit lock classes to solve this problem. You can use "lockInterruptibly" method of the "Lock" interface to achieve this. "lockInterruptibly" will allow the thread to try to acquire a lock while remaining responsive to the interruption. Here is a small example to achieve that:
public void workWithExplicitLock()throws InterruptedException{
Lock lock = new ReentrantLock();
lock.lockInterruptibly()();
try {
// work with shared object state
} finally {
lock.unlock();
}
}

Wait for specific condition to become true in threads

I have an application that makes HTTP requests to a site, ant then retrives the responses, inspects them and if the contain specific keywords, writes both the HTTP request and response to an XML file. This application uses a spider to map out all the URLS of a site and then sends request(each URL in the sitemap is fed to a separate thread that sends the request). This way I wont be able to know when all the requests have been sent. At the end of all I request i want to convert the XML file to some other format. So in order to find out when the request have ended I use the following strategy :
I store the time of each request in a varible (when a new request is sent at a time later than the time in the variable, the varible is updated). Also I start a thread to monitor this time, and if the difference in the current time and the time in the varible is more than 1 min, I know that the sending of requests has ceased. I use the following code for this purpose :
class monitorReq implements Runnable{
Thread t;
monitorReq(){
t=new Thread(this);
t.start();
}
public void run(){
while((new Date().getTime()-last_request.getTime()<60000)){
try{
Thread.sleep(30000);//Sleep for 30 secs before checking again
}
catch(IOException e){
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
System.out.println("Last request happened 1 min ago at : "+last_request.toString());
//call method for conversion of file
}
}
Is this approach correct? Or is there a better way in which I can implement the same thing.
Your current approach is not reliable. You will get into race conditions - if the thread is updating the time & the other thread is reading it at the same time. Also it will be difficult to do the processing of requests in multiple threads. You are assuming that task finishes in 60 seconds..
The following are better approaches.
If you know the number of requests you are going to make before hand you can use a CountDownLatch
main() {
int noOfRequests = ..;
final CountDownLatch doneSignal = new CountDownLatch(noOfRequests);
// spawn threads or use an executor service to perform the downloads
for(int i = 0;i<noOfRequests;i++) {
new Thread(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
// perform the download
doneSignal.countDown();
}
}).start();
}
doneSignal.await(); // This will block till all threads are done.
}
If you don't know the number of requests before hand then you can use the executorService to perform the downloads / processing using a thread pool
main() {
ExecutorService executor = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
while(moreRequests) {
executor.execute(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
// perform processing
}
});
}
// finished submitting all requests for processing. Wait for completion
executor.shutDown();
executor.awaitTermination(Long.MAX_VALUE, TimeUnit.Seconds);
}
General notes:
classes in Java should start with Capital Letters
there seems to be no synchronization between your threads; access to last_request should probably be synchronized
Using System.currentTimeMillis() would save you some objects' creation overhead
swallowing an exception like this is not a good practice
Answer:
Your way of doing it is acceptable. There is not much busy waiting and the idea is as simple as it gets. Which is good.
I would consider changing the wait time to a lower value; there is so little data, that even doing this loop every second will not take too much processing power, and will certainly improve the rection time from you app.

What could be the cause of RejectedExecutionException

I am getting this exception on my tomcat server (+liferay)
java.util.concurrent.RejectedExecutionException
my class is like that :
public class SingleExecutor extends ThreadPoolExecutor {
public SingleExecutor(){
super(1, 1,0L, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS,new LinkedBlockingQueue<Runnable>());
}
#Override
public void execute(Runnable command) {
if(command instanceof AccessLogInsert){
AccessLogInsert ali = (AccessLogInsert)command;
ali.setConn(conn);
ali.setPs(ps);
}
super.execute(command);
}
}
I get this exception on the line super.execute(command);
This error can occur when the queue is full but the LinkedBlockingQueue size is 2^31, and I am sure that there is no so many command waiting.
At start everything is stable, but after I redeploy a war it starts occuring. This class is not part of the war but in a jar in tomcat/lib.
Do you have any idea why this happend and how to fix it ?
From ThreadPoolExecutor JavaDoc (emphasis mine)
New tasks submitted in method execute(java.lang.Runnable) will be rejected when the Executor has been shut down, and also when the Executor uses finite bounds for both maximum threads and work queue capacity, and is saturated. In either case, the execute method invokes the RejectedExecutionHandler.rejectedExecution(java.lang.Runnable, java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor) method of its RejectedExecutionHandler. Four predefined handler policies are provided:
In the default ThreadPoolExecutor.AbortPolicy, the handler throws a runtime RejectedExecutionException upon rejection.
In ThreadPoolExecutor.CallerRunsPolicy, the thread that invokes execute itself runs the task. This provides a simple feedback control mechanism that will slow down the rate that new tasks are submitted.
In ThreadPoolExecutor.DiscardPolicy, a task that cannot be executed is simply dropped.
In ThreadPoolExecutor.DiscardOldestPolicy, if the executor is not shut down, the task at the head of the work queue is dropped, and then execution is retried (which can fail again, causing this to be repeated.)
It is possible to define and use other kinds of RejectedExecutionHandler classes. Doing so requires some care especially when policies are designed to work only under particular capacity or queuing policies.
Presumably therefore, reloading the war triggers a shutdown of the Executor. Try putting the relevant libraries in the war, so that Tomcat's ClassLoader has a better chance of correctly reloading your app.
Just to add to OrangeDog's excellent answer, the contract of an Executor is indeed such that its execute method will throw RejectedExecutionException when the executor is saturated (i.e. there is no space in the queue).
However, it would have been useful if it blocked instead, automatically waiting until there is space in the queue for the new task.
With the following custom BlockingQueue it's possible to achieve that:
public final class ThreadPoolQueue extends ArrayBlockingQueue<Runnable> {
public ThreadPoolQueue(int capacity) {
super(capacity);
}
#Override
public boolean offer(Runnable e) {
try {
put(e);
} catch (InterruptedException e1) {
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
return false;
}
return true;
}
}
That essentially implements the backpressure algorithm, slowing the producer whenever the executor saturates.
Use it as:
int n = Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors();
ThreadPoolExecutor executor = new ThreadPoolExecutor(0, n, 1, TimeUnit.MINUTES, new ThreadPoolQueue(n));
for (Runnable task : tasks) {
executor.execute(task); // will never throw, nor will queue more than n tasks
}
executor.shutdown();
executor.awaitTermination(1, TimeUnit.HOURS);

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