How to call a method with a separate thread in Java?

Question

let's say I have a method doWork(). How do I call it from a separate thread (not the main thread).

Answer 1

Create a class that implements the Runnable interface. Put the code you want to run in the run() method - that's the method that you must write to comply to the Runnable interface. In your "main" thread, create a new Thread class, passing the constructor an instance of your Runnable, then call start() on it. start tells the JVM to do the magic to create a new thread, and then call your run method in that new thread.

public class MyRunnable implements Runnable {

    private int var;

    public MyRunnable(int var) {
        this.var = var;
    }

    public void run() {
        // code in the other thread, can reference "var" variable
    }
}

public class MainThreadClass {
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        MyRunnable myRunnable = new MyRunnable(10);
        Thread t = new Thread(myRunnable)
        t.start();
    }    
}

Take a look at Java's concurrency tutorial to get started.

If your method is going to be called frequently, then it may not be worth creating a new thread each time, as this is an expensive operation. It would probably be best to use a thread pool of some sort. Have a look at Future, Callable, Executor classes in the java.util.concurrent package.

Answer 2

Sometime ago, I had written a simple utility class that uses JDK5 executor service and executes specific processes in the background. Since doWork() typically would have a void return value, you may want to use this utility class to execute it in the background.

See this article where I had documented this utility.