Executor Framework

Threads pools with the Executor Framework

Thread pools manage a pool of worker threads.

The thread pools contains a work queue which holds tasks waiting to get executed.

A thread pool can be described as a collection of Runnable objects (work queue) and a connections of running threads.

These threads are constantly running and are checking the work query for new work.
If there is new work to be done they execute this Runnable. The Thread class itself provides a method, e.g. execute(Runnable r) to add a new Runnable object to the work queue.

The Executor framework provides example implementation of the java.util.concurrent.Executor interface, e.g. Executors.newFixedThreadPool(int n) which will create n worker threads. The ExecutorService adds life cycle methods to the Executor, which allows to shut down the Executor and to wait for termination.

Tip 

If you want to use one thread pool with one thread which executes several runnables you can use the Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor() method.


Example,

public class WorkerThread implements Runnable {

    private String command;

    public WorkerThread(String s){
        this.command=s;
    }

    @Override
    public void run() {
        System.out.println(Thread.currentThread().getName()+' Start. Command = '+command);
        processCommand();
        System.out.println(Thread.currentThread().getName()+' End.');
    }

    private void processCommand() {
        try {
            Thread.sleep(5000);
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    @Override
    public String toString(){
        return this.command;
    }
}

Here is the test program where we are creating fixed thread pool from Executors framework.

import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;

public class SimpleThreadPool {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(5);
        for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
            Runnable worker = new WorkerThread('' + i);
            executor.execute(worker);
          }
        executor.shutdown();
        while (!executor.isTerminated()) {
        }
        System.out.println('Finished all threads');
    }

}

In above program, we are creating fixed size thread pool of 5 worker threads.
Then we are submitting 10 jobs to this pool, since the pool size is 5, it will start working on 5 jobs and other jobs will be in wait state, as soon as one of the job is finished, another job from the wait queue will be picked up by worker thread and get’s executed.

Here is the output of the above program.


pool-1-thread-2 Start. Command = 1
pool-1-thread-4 Start. Command = 3
pool-1-thread-1 Start. Command = 0
pool-1-thread-3 Start. Command = 2
pool-1-thread-5 Start. Command = 4
pool-1-thread-4 End.
pool-1-thread-5 End.
pool-1-thread-1 End.
pool-1-thread-3 End.
pool-1-thread-3 Start. Command = 8
pool-1-thread-2 End.
pool-1-thread-2 Start. Command = 9
pool-1-thread-1 Start. Command = 7
pool-1-thread-5 Start. Command = 6
pool-1-thread-4 Start. Command = 5
pool-1-thread-2 End.
pool-1-thread-4 End.
pool-1-thread-3 End.
pool-1-thread-5 End.
pool-1-thread-1 End.

Finished all threads