Handling exceptions from Java ExecutorService tasks

Question

I'm trying to use Java's ThreadPoolExecutor class to run a large number of heavy weight tasks with a fixed number of threads. Each of the tasks has many places during which it may fail due to exceptions.

I've subclassed ThreadPoolExecutor and I've overridden the afterExecute method which is supposed to provide any uncaught exceptions encountered while running a task. However, I can't seem to make it work.

For example:

public class ThreadPoolErrors extends ThreadPoolExecutor {
    public ThreadPoolErrors() {
        super(  1, // core threads
                1, // max threads
                1, // timeout
                TimeUnit.MINUTES, // timeout units
                new LinkedBlockingQueue<Runnable>() // work queue
        );
    }

    protected void afterExecute(Runnable r, Throwable t) {
        super.afterExecute(r, t);
        if(t != null) {
            System.out.println("Got an error: " + t);
        } else {
            System.out.println("Everything's fine--situation normal!");
        }
    }

    public static void main( String [] args) {
        ThreadPoolErrors threadPool = new ThreadPoolErrors();
        threadPool.submit( 
                new Runnable() {
                    public void run() {
                        throw new RuntimeException("Ouch! Got an error.");
                    }
                }
        );
        threadPool.shutdown();
    }
}

The output from this program is "Everything's fine--situation normal!" even though the only Runnable submitted to the thread pool throws an exception. Any clue to what's going on here?

Thanks!

Answer 1

WARNING: It should be noted that this solution will block the calling thread.

---

If you want to process exceptions thrown by the task, then it is generally better to use Callable rather than Runnable.

Callable.call() is permitted to throw checked exceptions, and these get propagated back to the calling thread:

Callable task = ...
Future future = executor.submit(task);
try {
   future.get();
} catch (ExecutionException ex) {
   ex.getCause().printStackTrace();
}

If Callable.call() throws an exception, this will be wrapped in an ExecutionException and thrown by Future.get().

This is likely to be much preferable to subclassing ThreadPoolExecutor. It also gives you the opportunity to re-submit the task if the exception is a recoverable one.