Read file at a certain rate in Java

Question

Is there an article/algorithm on how I can read a long file at a certain rate?

Say I do not want to pass 10 KB/sec while issuing reads.

Answer 1

A simple solution, by creating a ThrottledInputStream.

This should be used like this:

        final InputStream slowIS = new ThrottledInputStream(new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream("c:\\file.txt"),8000),300);

300 is the number of kilobytes per second. 8000 is the block size for BufferedInputStream.

This should of course be generalized by implementing read(byte b[], int off, int len), which will spare you a ton of System.currentTimeMillis() calls. System.currentTimeMillis() is called once for each byte read, which can cause a bit of an overhead. It should also be possible to store the number of bytes that can savely be read without calling System.currentTimeMillis().

Be sure to put a BufferedInputStream in between, otherwise the FileInputStream will be polled in single bytes rather than blocks. This will reduce the CPU load form 10% to almost 0. You will risk to exceed the data rate by the number of bytes in the block size.

import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.IOException;

public class ThrottledInputStream extends InputStream {
    private final InputStream rawStream;
    private long totalBytesRead;
    private long startTimeMillis;

    private static final int BYTES_PER_KILOBYTE = 1024;
    private static final int MILLIS_PER_SECOND = 1000;
    private final int ratePerMillis;

    public ThrottledInputStream(InputStream rawStream, int kBytesPersecond) {
        this.rawStream = rawStream;
        ratePerMillis = kBytesPersecond * BYTES_PER_KILOBYTE / MILLIS_PER_SECOND;
    }

    @Override
    public int read() throws IOException {
        if (startTimeMillis == 0) {
            startTimeMillis = System.currentTimeMillis();
        }
        long now = System.currentTimeMillis();
        long interval = now - startTimeMillis;
        //see if we are too fast..
        if (interval * ratePerMillis < totalBytesRead + 1) { //+1 because we are reading 1 byte
            try {
                final long sleepTime = ratePerMillis / (totalBytesRead + 1) - interval; // will most likely only be relevant on the first few passes
                Thread.sleep(Math.max(1, sleepTime));
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {//never realized what that is good for :)
            }
        }
        totalBytesRead += 1;
        return rawStream.read();
    }
}