Java: How to wait for all threads to finish?

Question

I need to execute some amount of tasks 4 at a time, something like this:

ExecutorService taskExecutor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(4);
while(...) {
    taskExecutor.execute(new MyTask());
}
//...wait for completion somehow

How can I get notified once all of them are complete? For now I can't think about anything better than setting some global task counter and decrease it at the end of every task, then monitor in infinite loop this counter to become 0; or get a list of Futures and in infinite loop monitor isDone for all of them. What are better solutions not involving infinite loops?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Basically on an ExecutorService you call shutdown() and then awaitTermination():

ExecutorService taskExecutor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(4);
while(...) {
  taskExecutor.execute(new MyTask());
}
taskExecutor.shutdown();
try {
  taskExecutor.awaitTermination(Long.MAX_VALUE, TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
  ...
}

Answer 2

Use a CountDownLatch:

CountDownLatch latch = new CountDownLatch(totalNumberOfTasks);
ExecutorService taskExecutor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(4);
while(...) {
  taskExecutor.execute(new MyTask());
}

try {
  latch.await();
} catch (InterruptedException E) {
   // handle
}

and within your task (enclose in try / finally)

latch.countDown();

Answer 3

You could wrap your tasks in another runnable, that will send notifications:

taskExecutor.execute(new Runnable() {
  public void run() {
    taskStartedNotification();
    new MyTask().run();
    taskFinishedNotification();
  }
});

Answer 4

You could use your own subclass of ExecutorCompletionService to wrap taskExecutor, and your own implementation of BlockingQueue to get informed when each task completes and perform whatever callback or other action you desire when the number of completed tasks reaches your desired goal.

Answer 5

ExecutorService.invokeAll() does it for you.

ExecutorService taskExecutor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(4);
List<Callable<?>> tasks; // your tasks
// invokeAll() returns when all tasks are complete
List<Future<?>> futures = taskExecutor.invokeAll(tasks);

Answer 6

The CyclicBarrier class in Java 5 and later is designed for this sort of thing.