Java executors: how to be notified, without blocking, when a task completes?

Solution 1:

Define a callback interface to receive whatever parameters you want to pass along in the completion notification. Then invoke it at the end of the task.

You could even write a general wrapper for Runnable tasks, and submit these to ExecutorService. Or, see below for a mechanism built into Java 8.

class CallbackTask implements Runnable {

  private final Runnable task;

  private final Callback callback;

  CallbackTask(Runnable task, Callback callback) {
    this.task = task;
    this.callback = callback;
  }

  public void run() {
    task.run();
    callback.complete();
  }

}

With CompletableFuture, Java 8 included a more elaborate means to compose pipelines where processes can be completed asynchronously and conditionally. Here's a contrived but complete example of notification.

import java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture;
import java.util.concurrent.ThreadLocalRandom;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

public class GetTaskNotificationWithoutBlocking {

  public static void main(String... argv) throws Exception {
    ExampleService svc = new ExampleService();
    GetTaskNotificationWithoutBlocking listener = new GetTaskNotificationWithoutBlocking();
    CompletableFuture<String> f = CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(svc::work);
    f.thenAccept(listener::notify);
    System.out.println("Exiting main()");
  }

  void notify(String msg) {
    System.out.println("Received message: " + msg);
  }

}

class ExampleService {

  String work() {
    sleep(7000, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS); /* Pretend to be busy... */
    char[] str = new char[5];
    ThreadLocalRandom current = ThreadLocalRandom.current();
    for (int idx = 0; idx < str.length; ++idx)
      str[idx] = (char) ('A' + current.nextInt(26));
    String msg = new String(str);
    System.out.println("Generated message: " + msg);
    return msg;
  }

  public static void sleep(long average, TimeUnit unit) {
    String name = Thread.currentThread().getName();
    long timeout = Math.min(exponential(average), Math.multiplyExact(10, average));
    System.out.printf("%s sleeping %d %s...%n", name, timeout, unit);
    try {
      unit.sleep(timeout);
      System.out.println(name + " awoke.");
    } catch (InterruptedException abort) {
      Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
      System.out.println(name + " interrupted.");
    }
  }

  public static long exponential(long avg) {
    return (long) (avg * -Math.log(1 - ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextDouble()));
  }

}

Solution 2:

In Java 8 you can use CompletableFuture. Here's an example I had in my code where I'm using it to fetch users from my user service, map them to my view objects and then update my view or show an error dialog (this is a GUI application):

    CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(
            userService::listUsers
    ).thenApply(
            this::mapUsersToUserViews
    ).thenAccept(
            this::updateView
    ).exceptionally(
            throwable -> { showErrorDialogFor(throwable); return null; }
    );

It executes asynchronously. I'm using two private methods: mapUsersToUserViews and updateView.