How to send multiple asynchronous requests to different web services?

Question

I need to send multiple requests to many different web services and receive the results. The problem is that, if I send the requests one by one it takes so long as I need to sen

Answer 1

So just for fun I am providing two working examples. The first one shows the old school way of doing this before java 1.5. The second shows a much cleaner way using tools available within java 1.5:

import java.util.ArrayList;

public class ThreadingExample
{
    private ArrayList  myThreads;

    public static class MyRunnable implements Runnable
    {
        private String data;

        public String getData()
        {
            return data;
        }

        public void setData(String data)
        {
            this.data = data;
        }

        @Override
        public void run()
        {
        }
    }

    public static class MyThread extends Thread
    {
        private MyRunnable myRunnable;

        MyThread(MyRunnable runnable)
        {
            super(runnable);
            setMyRunnable(runnable);
        }

        /**
         * @return the myRunnable
         */
        public MyRunnable getMyRunnable()
        {
            return myRunnable;
        }

        /**
         * @param myRunnable the myRunnable to set
         */
        public void setMyRunnable(MyRunnable myRunnable)
        {
            this.myRunnable = myRunnable;
        }
    }

    public ThreadingExample()
    {
        myThreads = new ArrayList  ();
    }

    public ArrayList  retrieveMyData ()
    {
        ArrayList  allmyData = new ArrayList  ();

        if (isComplete() == false)
        {
            // Sadly we aren't done
            return (null);
        }

        for (MyThread myThread : myThreads)
        {
            allmyData.add(myThread.getMyRunnable().getData());
        }

        return (allmyData);
    }

    private boolean isComplete()
    {
        boolean complete = true;

        // wait for all of them to finish
        for (MyThread x : myThreads)
        {
            if (x.isAlive())
            {
                complete = false;
                break;
            }
        }
        return (complete);
    }

    public void kickOffQueries()
    {
        myThreads.clear();

        MyThread a = new MyThread(new MyRunnable()
        {
            @Override
            public void run()
            {
                // This is where you make the call to external services
                // giving the results to setData("");
                setData("Data from list A");
            }
        });
        myThreads.add(a);

        MyThread b = new MyThread (new MyRunnable()
        {
            @Override
            public void run()
            {
                // This is where you make the call to external services
                // giving the results to setData("");
                setData("Data from list B");
            }
        });
        myThreads.add(b);

        for (MyThread x : myThreads)
        {
            x.start();
        }

        boolean done = false;

        while (done == false)
        {
            if (isComplete())
            {
                done = true;
            }
            else
            {
                // Sleep for 10 milliseconds
                try
                {
                    Thread.sleep(10);
                }
                catch (InterruptedException e)
                {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        }
    }


    public static void main(String [] args)
    {
        ThreadingExample example = new ThreadingExample();
        example.kickOffQueries();

        ArrayList  data = example.retrieveMyData();
        if (data != null)
        {
            for (String s : data)
            {
                System.out.println (s);
            }
        }
    }
}

This is the much simpler working version:

import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.concurrent.Callable;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;
import java.util.concurrent.Future;

public class ThreadingExample
{

    public static void main(String [] args)
    {
        ExecutorService service = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
        Set > callables = new HashSet > ();

        callables.add(new Callable()
        {
            @Override
            public String call() throws Exception
            {
                return "This is where I make the call to web service A, and put its results here";
            }
        });

        callables.add(new Callable()
        {
            @Override
            public String call() throws Exception
            {
                return "This is where I make the call to web service B, and put its results here";
            }
        });

        callables.add(new Callable()
        {
            @Override
            public String call() throws Exception
            {
                return "This is where I make the call to web service C, and put its results here";
            }
        });

        try
        {
            List> futures = service.invokeAll(callables);
            for (Future future : futures)
            {
                System.out.println (future.get());
            }
        }
        catch (InterruptedException e)
        {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        catch (ExecutionException e)
        {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}