Is it a good way to use java.util.concurrent.FutureTask?

Question

First of all, I must say that I am quite new to the API java.util.concurrent, so maybe what I am doing is completely wrong.

What do I want to do?

I have a Java application that basically runs 2 separate processing (called myFirstProcess, mySecondProcess), but these processing must be run at the same time.

So, I tried to do that:

public void startMyApplication() {
    ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(2);
    FutureTask<Object> futureOne = new FutureTask<Object>(myFirstProcess);
    FutureTask<Object> futureTwo = new FutureTask<Object>(mySecondProcess);
    executor.execute(futureOne);
    executor.execute(futureTwo);
    while (!(futureOne.isDone() && futureTwo.isDone())) {
        try {
            // I wait until both processes are finished.
            Thread.sleep(1000);
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
    logger.info("Processing finished");
    executor.shutdown();
    // Do some processing on results
    ...
}

myFirstProcess and mySecondProcess are classes that implements Callable<Object>, and where all their processing is made in the call() method.

It is working quite well but I am not sure that it is the correct way to do that. Is a good way to do what I want? If not, can you give me some hints to enhance my code (and still keep it as simple as possible).

Answer 1

You'd be better off using the get() method.

futureOne.get();
futureTwo.get();

Both of which wait for notification from the thread that it finished processing, this saves you the busy-wait-with-timer you are now using which is not efficient nor elegant.

As a bonus, you have the API get(long timeout, TimeUnit unit) which allows you to define a maximum time for the thread to sleep and wait for a response, and otherwise continues running.

See the Java API for more info.