Can I make a Java HttpServer threaded/process requests in parallel?

Question

I have built a simple HttpServer following tutorials i have found online, using Sun's lightweight HttpServer.

Basically the main function looks like this:

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        HttpServer server = HttpServer.create(new InetSocketAddress(8000), 0);
        //Create the context for the server.
        server.createContext("/", new BaseHandler());

        server.setExecutor(null); // creates a default executor
        server.start();
    }

And I have implemented the BaseHandler Interface's method to process the Http request and return a response.

static class BaseHandler implements HttpHandler {
        //Handler method
        public void handle(HttpExchange t) throws IOException {

          //Implementation of http request processing
          //Read the request, get the parameters and print them
          //in the console, then build a response and send it back.
        }
  }

I have also created a Client that sends multiple requests via threads. Each thread sends the following request to the server:

http://localhost:8000/[context]?int="+threadID

On Each client run, The requests seem to arrive in different order to the server, but they are served in a serial manner.

What i wish to acomplish is for the requests to be processed in a parallel manner if that is possible.

Is it possible, for example, to run each handler in a seperate thread, and if so, is it a good thing to do.

Or should i just drop using Sun's lightweight server altogether and focus an building something from scratch?

Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

As you can see in ServerImpl, the default executor just "run" the task :

  157       private static class DefaultExecutor implements Executor {
  158           public void execute (Runnable task) {
  159               task.run();
  160           }
  161       }

you must provide a real executor for your httpServer, like that :

server.setExecutor(java.util.concurrent.Executors.newCachedThreadPool());

and your server will run in parallel. Carefull, this is a non-limited Executor, see Executors.newFixedThreadPool to limit the number of Thread.