How is CountDownLatch used in Java Multithreading?

Question

Can someone help me to understand what Java CountDownLatch is and when to use it?

I don't have a very clear idea of how this program works. As I understand all three threads start at once and each Thread will call CountDownLatch after 3000ms. So count down will decrement one by one. After latch becomes zero the program prints "Completed". Maybe the way I understood is incorrect.

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

class Processor implements Runnable {
    private CountDownLatch latch;

    public Processor(CountDownLatch latch) {
        this.latch = latch;
    }

    public void run() {
        System.out.println("Started.");

        try {
            Thread.sleep(3000);
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        latch.countDown();
    }
}

// -----------------------------------------------------

public class App {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        CountDownLatch latch = new CountDownLatch(3); // coundown from 3 to 0

        ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(3); // 3 Threads in pool

        for(int i=0; i < 3; i++) {
            executor.submit(new Processor(latch)); // ref to latch. each time call new Processes latch will count down by 1
        }

        try {
            latch.await();  // wait until latch counted down to 0
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        System.out.println("Completed.");
    }

}

Answer 1

Yes, you understood correctly. CountDownLatch works in latch principle, the main thread will wait until the gate is open. One thread waits for n threads, specified while creating the CountDownLatch.

Any thread, usually the main thread of the application, which calls CountDownLatch.await() will wait until count reaches zero or it's interrupted by another thread. All other threads are required to count down by calling CountDownLatch.countDown() once they are completed or ready.

As soon as count reaches zero, the waiting thread continues. One of the disadvantages/advantages of CountDownLatch is that it's not reusable: once count reaches zero you cannot use CountDownLatch any more.

Edit:

Use CountDownLatch when one thread (like the main thread) requires to wait for one or more threads to complete, before it can continue processing.

A classical example of using CountDownLatch in Java is a server side core Java application which uses services architecture, where multiple services are provided by multiple threads and the application cannot start processing until all services have started successfully.

P.S. OP's question has a pretty straightforward example so I didn't include one.