e-Science e-Business
e-Government and their
Technologies
Advanced Java
Bryan Carpenter, Geoffrey Fox, Marlon Pierce
Pervasive Technology Laboratories
Indiana University Bloomington IN 47404
January 12 2004
dbcarpen@indiana.edu
gcf@indiana.edu
mpierce@cs.indiana.edu
http://www.grid2004.org/spring2004
1
What are we doing








This is a semester-long course on Grids (viewed as technologies
and infrastructure) and the application – mainly to science but
also to business and government
We will assume a basic knowledge of the Java language and then
interweave 6 topic areas – first four cover technologies that will
be used by students
1) Advanced Java: including networking, Java Server Pages and
perhaps servlets
2) XML: Specification, Tools, Linkage to Java
3) Web Services: Basic Ideas, WSDL, Axis and Tomcat
4)Grid Systems: GT3/Cogkit, Gateway, XSOAP, Portlet
5) Advanced Technology Discussions: CORBA as istory, OGSADAI, security, Semantic Grid, Workflow
6) Applications: Bioinformatics, Particle Physics, Engineering,
Crises, Computing-on-demand Grid, Earth Science
2
Course Topic 1

Advanced Java Programming
• We will assume basic Java programming proficiency
• We will cover Java client/server, three-tiered and network
programming.
• Ancillary but interesting Java topics to be covered include
Apache Ant, XML-Beans, and Java Message Service


Material in the last bullet will mostly be introduced in
later sections, as the course unfolds.
First lecture of the segment starts with a fairly
discursive review of Java features.
3
Reading Material

No particular text for this section, but some material
will come from earlier related courses:
• Java HPC Course, September 2003
http://www.hpjava.org/courses/arl
• Opennet Technologies Online Course, Fall 2001
http://aspen.ucs.indiana.edu/ptliu
• Applications of Information Technology I and II, Spring 2001
http://aspen.ucs.indiana.edu/it1spring01
http://aspen.ucs.indiana.edu/it2spring01
4
Java History

The Java language grabbed public attention in 1995,
with the release of the HotJava experimental Web
browser, and the subsequent incorporation of Java
into the Netscape browser.
• Java had originally been developed—under the name of
Oak—as an operating environment for PDAs, a few years
before.

Very suddenly, Java became one of the most important
programming languages in the industry.
• The trend continued. Although Web applets are less
important today than they were originally, Java was rapidly
adopted by many other sectors of the programming
community.
5
The Java Virtual Machine


Java programs are not compiled to machine code in
the same way as conventional programming language.
To support safe execution of compiled code on
multiple platforms (portability, security), they are
compiled to instructions for an abstract machine
called the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
• The JVM is a specification originally published by Sun
Microsystems.
• JVM instructions are called Java byte codes. They are
stored in a class file.
• This execution model is part of the specification of the Java
platform. There are a few compilers from the Java language
to machine code, but it is hard to get these recognized as
“Java compliant”.
6
JVM and Performance

The first implementations of the JVM simply
interpreted the byte codes. These implementations were
very slow.
• This led to a common misconception that Java is an interpreted
language and inherently slow.

Modern JVMs normally perform some form of
compilation from byte codes to machine code on the fly,
as the Java program is executed.
7
Run-time Compilation



In one form of Just-In-Time compilation, methods may be
compiled to machine code immediately before they are executed
for the first time. Then subsequent calls to the method just
involve jumping into the machine code.
More sophisticated forms of adaptive compilation (like in the Sun
Hotspot JVMs) initially run methods in interpreted mode,
monitor program behavior, and only spend time compiling
portions of the byte code where the program spends significant
time. This allows more intelligent allocation of CPU time to
compilation and optimization.
Modern JVMs (like the Hotspot server JVM) implement many of
the most important kinds of optimization used by the static
compilers of “traditional” programming languages.
• Adaptive compilation may also allow some optimization approaches that
are impractical for static compilers, because they don’t have the run-time
information.
8
Features of the Java
Language
9
Prerequisites

We assume you know either Java or C++ moderately
well.
• But some things, like threaded and network programming
with Java, will be covered from an introductory level later on.

In this section I will only point out some features and
terminologies that are characteristic of Java and that
you probably should understand.
• And highlight some of the differences from C++.
10
What Java Isn’t

C++, mainly—now hard to think of languages as closely related.
• Similar syntax for expressions, control constructs, etc, but these are perhaps
the least characteristic features of C++ or Java.

In C++ use features like operator overloading, copy constructors,
templates, etc, to create “little languages” through class libraries.
• Worry about memory management and efficient creation of objects.
• Worry about inline versus virtual methods, pointers versus references,
minimizing overheads.

In Java most of these things go away.
• Minimal control over memory management, due to automatic garbage
collection.
• Highly dynamic : all code is loaded dynamically on demand; implicit runtime descriptors play an important role, through run-time type checks,
instanceof, etc.
• Logically all methods are virtual; overloading and implementation of
interfaces is ubiquitous.
• Exceptions, rarely used in C++, are used universally in Java.
11
Java Class Structure

All methods and (non-local) variables are
explicitly member of classes (or interfaces).
• No default, global, namespace (except for the names of
classes and interfaces).

Java discards multiple inheritance at the class
level. Inheritance relations between classes are
strictly tree-like.
• Every class inheritance diagram has the universal base
class Object at its root.
12
Java Class Structure (2)

Java introduces the important idea of an interface,
which is logically different from a class.
Interfaces contain no implementation code for the
methods they define.
• Multiple inheritance of interfaces is allowed, and this is
one way Java manages without it at the class level.

Since Java 1.2, classes and interfaces can be
nested.
• This is a big change to the language: read JLS 2nd
Edition in detail if you don’t believe this!
13
Classes and Instances

Will consistently use the following terminologies
(which are “correct”):
• A class is a type, e.g.
public class A {int x ; void foo() {x = 23 ;}}
• An interface is a type, e.g .
public interface B {void goo() ;}
• An instance is an object. An object is always an
instance of one particular class.
 That class may extend other classes, and implement
multiple interfaces.
14
Pointers in Java?

Any expression in Java that has class type (or
interface type) is a reference to some instance (or
it is a null reference). E.g. a variable declared:
Aa;
holds a reference to an instance. The objects
themselves are “behind the scenes” in Java: we
can only manipulate pointers (references) to them.
• E.g. a = b ; Only copies a reference, not an object.

But important to note references to objects and
arrays are the only kinds of pointer in Java. E.g.
there are no pointers to fields or array elements or
local variables.
15
Instance and static members

The following terminologies are common. In:
public class A {
int x
void foo() {…}
static int y ;
static void goo() {…}
}
We say:
x is an or instance variable, or non-static field.
foo() is an instance method, or non-static method.
y is a static field, or class variable.
goo() is a static method, or class method.
16
Class Loading

A Java program is typically written as a class with a public,
static, void, main() method, as follows
public class MyProgram {
public static void main(String [] args) {
… body of program …
}
}
and started by a command like:
$ java MyProgram


This command creates a Java Virtual Machine, loads the class
MyProgram into the JVM, then invoke its main() method.
As this process unfolds, dependencies on other class and
interfaces and their supertypes will be encountered, e.g. through
statements that use other classes. The class loader brings in the
class files for these types on demand. Code is loaded, and
methods linked, incrementally, throughout execution.
17
The CLASSPATH

Many people have problems getting the
CLASSPATH environment variable right.
• Because all linking is done at run-time, must ensure
that this environment variable has the right class files
on it.

The class path is a colon-separated (semicolonseparated in Windows) list of directories and jar
files.
• If the class path is empty, it is equivalent to “.”. But if
the class path is not empty, “.” is not included by
default.
• A directory entry means a root directory in which class
files or package directories are stored; a jar entry
means a jar archive in which class files or package
directories are stored.
18
Binary Compatibility

There is a useful property called binarycompatibility between classes. This means that
(within some specified limits) two class files that
implement the same public interface can be used
interchangeably.
• It also means that if you pick up an inappropriate
implementation of a given class from the CLASSPATH
at runtime, things can go wrong in an opaque way.
19
Java Native Interface

Some methods in a class may be declared as native
methods, e.g.:
class B {
public native long add(int [] nums) ;
}
Notice the method add() has the modifier native, and the
body of the method declaration is missing
• It is replaced by a semicolon—similar to abstract methods in
interfaces, etc. But in this case the method isn’t abstract.
• The implementation of a native method will be given in
another language, typically C or C++ (we consider C).

Implementing native methods is quite involved.
• Arguably a good thing—it discourages casual use! Generally
need a good reason for resorting to JNI.
20
A Definition of Java_B_add()
JNIEXPORT jlong JNICALL Java_B_add(JNIEnv * env,
jobject this, jintArray nums) {
jint *cnums ;
int i, n ;
jlong sum = 0 ;
n = (*env)->GetArrayLen(env, nums) ;
cnums = (*env)->GetIntArrayElements(env, nums, NULL) ;
for(i = 0 ; i < n ; i++)
sum += cnums [i] ;
return sum ;
}
21
The Invocation API



JNI also provides a very powerful mechanism for going
the other way—calling from a C program into Java.
First the C program needs to create a JVM (initialize all
the data structures associated with a running JVM),
which it does with a suitable library call.
The standard java command works exactly this way—it
uses the JNI invocation API to create a JVM, and call
the main() method of the class specified on the
command line.
22
The Rest of this Segment

1.
Will cover three core topics in “advanced Java”:
Multithreaded Programming in Java
•
2.
Network Programming in Java
•
•
3.
Traditional Java class libraries for sockets, URLs.
Overview of Java “New I/O”.
Java Servlets and Java Server Pages.
•

Java as a multithreaded language; Java thread synchronization
primitives.
Java technologies for “Web Applications”.
Other Java techniques (e.g. Java for XML, Web Services) will be
introduced as the course unfolds.
23
1) Multithreaded
Programming in Java
24
Need for Concurrent Programming

This course is mostly about distributed programming.
• This is a different discipline from concurrent or multithreaded
programming, but doing distributed programming without
understanding concurrent programming is error prone.
• Some frameworks (e.g. EJB) try to enable distributed
programming while insulating the programmer from the
difficulties of concurrent programming, but eventually you
are likely to hit concurrency issues.
+ Non-determinism
Sequential
programming
+ Partial failures
Concurrent
programming
Distributed
programming
25
Java as a Threaded Language

In C, C++, etc it is possible to do multithreaded
programming, given a suitable library.
• e.g. the pthreads library.

Unlike other languages, Java integrates threads
into the basic language specification in a much
tighter way.
• Every Java Virtual Machine must support threads.
26
Features of Java Threads

Java provides a set of synchronization primitives
based on monitor and condition variable paradigm of
C.A.R. Hoare.
• Underlying functionality similar to e.g. POSIX threads.

Syntactic extension for threads (deceptively?) small:
•
•
•
•

synchronized attribute on methods.
synchronized statement.
volatile keyword.
Other thread management and synchronization captured
in the Thread class and related classes.
But the presence of threads has a wide-ranging
effect on language specification and JVM
implementation.
27
Contents of this Lecture

Introduction to Java Threads.
• Mutual Exclusion.
• Synchronization between Java Threads using wait() and
notify().
• Other features of Java Threads.

Suggested Exercises
28
Java Thread Basics
29
Threads of Execution




Every statement in a Java program is executed in a
context called its thread of execution.
When you start a Java program in the normal way, the
main() method—and any methods called from that
method—are executed in a singled out (but otherwise
ordinary) thread sometimes called the main thread.
Other threads can run concurrently with the main
thread. These threads share access to the same classes
and objects as the main thread, but they execute
asynchronously, in their own time.
The main thread can create new threads; these threads
can create further threads, etc.
30
Creating New Threads

Any Java thread of execution (including the main
thread) is associated with an instance of the
Thread class. Before starting a new thread, you
must create a new instance of this class.

The Java Thread class implements the interface
Runnable. So every Thread instance has a method:
public void run() { . . . }

When the thread is started, the code executed in
the new thread is the body of the run() method.
• Generally speaking the new thread ends when this
method returns.
31
Making Thread Instances

There are two ways to create a thread instance (and define the
thread run() method). Choose at your convenience:
1. Extend the Thread class and override the run() method, e.g.:
class MyThread extends Thread {
public void run() {
System.out.println(“Hello from another thread”) ;
}
}
...
Thread thread = new MyThread() ;
2. Create a separate Runnable object and pass to the Thread constructor:
class MyRunnable implements Runnable {
public void run() {
System.out.println(“Hello from another thread”) ;
}
}
...
Thread thread = new MyThread(new MyRunnable()) ;
32
Starting a Thread


Creating the Thread instance does not in itself start the
thread running.
To do that you must call the start() method on the new
instance:
thread.start() ;


This operation causes the run() method to start
executing concurrently with the original thread.
In our example the new thread will print the message
“Hello from another thread” to standard output, then
immediately terminate.
You can only call the start() method once on any Thread
instance. Trying to “restart” a thread causes an
exception to be thrown.
33
Example: Multiple Threads
class MyThread extends Thread {
MyThread(int id) {
this.id = id ;
}
public void run() {
System.out.println(“Hello from thread ” + id) ;
}
private int id ;
}
...
Thread [] threads = new Thread [p] ;
for(int i = 0 ; i < p ; i++)
threads [i] = new MyThread(i) ;
for(int i = 0 ; i < p ; i++)
threads [i].start() ;
34
Remarks

This is one way of creating and starting p new threads to
run concurrently.

The output might be something like (for p = 4):
Hello from thread 3
Hello from thread 4
Hello from thread 2
Hello from thread 1
Of course there is no guarantee of order (or atomicity) of
outputs, because the threads are concurrent.

One might worry about the efficiency of this approach
for large numbers of threads (massive parallelism).
35
JVM Termination and Daemon Threads


When a Java application is started, the main() method of the
application is executed in the main thread.
If the main method never creates any new threads—the
JVM keeps running until the main() method completes (and
the main thread terminates).
•


Typically, the java command finishes.
If main() creates new threads, by default the JVM
terminates when all user-created threads have terminated.
More generally there are system threads executing in the
background (e.g. threads might be associated with garbage
collection). These are marked as daemon threads—meaning
that they don’t have the property of “keeping the JVM
alive”. So actually the JVM terminates when all nondaemon threads terminate.
•
Ordinary user threads can create daemon threads by applying the
setDaemon() method to the thread instance before starting it.
36
Mutual Exclusion
37
Avoiding Interference

In any non-trivial multithreaded (or shared-memory-parallel)
program, interference between threads is an issue.

Generally interference (or a race condition) occurs if two
threads are trying to do operations on the same variables at
the same time. This often results in corrupt data.
•

But not always. It depends on the exact interleaving of instructions.
This non-determinism is the worst feature of race conditions.
A popular solution is to provide some kind of lock primitive.
Only one thread can acquire a particular lock at any
particular time. The concurrent program can be written so
that operations on some given variables are only performed
by threads holding the lock for those variables.
•
In POSIX threads, for example, the lock objects are called mutexes.
38
Monitors

Java adopts a version of monitors, proposed by C.A.R. Hoare.

Every Java object is created with its own lock (and every lock is
associated with an object—there is no way to create an isolated
mutex). In Java this lock is often called the monitor lock.

Methods of a class can be declared to be synchronized.

The object’s lock is acquired on entry to a synchronized method,
and released on exit from the method.
•
Synchronized static methods need slightly different treatment.

If methods generally modify the fields (instance variables) of
the method instance, this leads to a natural and systematic
association between locks and the variables they guard.

The critical region is the body of the synchronized method.
39
Example use of Synchronized Methods
Thread A
Thread B
… call to counter.increment() …
// body of synchronized method
tmp1 = count ;
count = tmp1 + 1 ;
… counter.increment() returns …
… call to counter.decrement() …
Blocked
// body of synchronized method
tmp2 = count ;
count = tmp2 - 1 ;
… counter.decrement() returns …
40
Caveats



This approach helps to encourage good practices, and make
multithreaded Java programs less error-prone than, say,
multithreaded C programs.
But it isn’t magic—it still depends on correct identification
of the critical regions, to avoid race conditions.
Concurrent programming is hard, and if you start with the
assumption Java somehow makes concurrent programming
“easy”, you are probably going to write some broken
programs!
41
Example: A Simple Queue
public class SimpleQueue {
public synchronized void add(Object data) {
if (front != null) {
back.next = new Node(data) ;
back = back.next ;
}
else {
front = new Node(data) ;
back = front ;
}
}
public synchronized Object rem() {
Object result = null ;
if (front != null) {
result = front.data ;
front = front.next ;
}
return result ;
}
private Node front, back ;
}
42
Remarks

This queue is implemented as a linked list with a front
pointer and a back pointer.
• The method add() adds a node to the back of the list; the
method rem() removes a node from the front of the list.
• The rem() method immediately returns null when the queue is
empty.


The Node class just has a data field (type Object) and a
next field (type Node).
The following slide gives an example of what could go
wrong without mutual exclusion. It assumes two
threads concurrently add nodes to the queue.
• In the initial state, Z is the last item in the queue. In the final
state, the X node is orphaned, and the back pointer is null.
43
The Need for Synchronized Methods
Thread A: add(X)
null
Z
back
back.next = new Node(X) ;
X
Thread B: add(Y)
null
back.next = new Node(Y) ;
Z
X
back
null
Z
Y
null
back
back = back.next ;
X
null
Z
Y
back = back.next ;
null
back
X
null
Z
Y
back
null
Corrupt data structure!
null
44
The synchronized construct

The keyword synchronized also appears in the
synchronized statement, which has syntax like:
synchronized (object) {
… critical region …
}
• Here object is a reference to any object. The synchronized
statement first acquires the lock on this object, then
executes the critical region, then releases the lock.
• Typically you might use this for the lock object, somewhere
inside a non-synchronized method, when the critical region
is smaller than the whole method body.
• In general, though, the synchronized statement allows you
to use the lock in any object to guard any code.
45
Deadlock

Deadlock occurs when a group of threads are mutually waiting
for one another in such a way that none can proceed.
• This happens if there is a cycle of waits-for dependencies, e.g.
A waits for B, B waits for C, … , D waits for A.

There are unfortunately many ways this can occur. One
common situation is if two threads try to acquire the same pair
of locks in different orders, e.g.:
Thread A
synchronized(x) {
…
synchronized(y) {
…
}
}
Thread B
synchronized(y) {
…
synchronized(x) {
…
}
}
46
Performance Cost of synchronized

Acquiring locks introduces an overhead in execution
of synchronized methods. See, for example:
“Performance Limitations of the Java Core Libraries”,
Allan Heydon and Marc Najork (Compaq),
Proceedings of ACM 1999 Java Grande Conference.


Many of the original utility classes in the Java
platform (e.g. Vector, etc) were specified to have
synchronized methods, to make them safe for the
multithreaded environment.
This was probably a mistake: newer replacement
classes (e.g. ArrayList) don’t have synchronized
methods—the programmer provides synchronization
as needed, e.g. through wrapper classes.
47
General Synchronization
48
Beyond Mutual Exclusion




The mutual exclusion provided by synchronized
methods and statements is an important category of
synchronization.
But there are other interesting forms of
synchronization between threads. Mutual exclusion by
itself is not enough to implement these more general
sorts of thread interaction (not efficiently, anyway).
POSIX threads, for example, provides a second kind of
synchronization object called a condition variable to
implement more general inter-thread synchronization.
In Java, condition variables (like locks) are implicit in
the definition of objects: every object effectively has a
single condition variable associated with it.
49
A Motivating Example




Consider the simple queue from the previous example.
If we try to remove an item from the front of the queue
when the queue is empty, SimpleQueue was specified to
just return null.
This is reasonable if our queue is just meant as a data
structure buried somewhere in an algorithm. But what
if the queue is a message buffer in a communication
system?
In that case, if the queue is empty, it may be more
natural for the “remove” operation to block until some
other thread added a message to the queue.
50
Busy Waiting

One approach would be to add a method that polls the queue
until data is ready:
public synchronized Object get() {
while(true) {
Object result = rem() ;
if (result != null)
return result ;
}
}

This works, but it may be inefficient to keep doing the basic
rem() operation in a tight loop, if these machine cycles could be
used by other threads.
• This isn’t clear cut: sometimes busy waiting is the most efficient solution.

Another possibility is to put a sleep() operation in the loop, to
deschedule the thread for some fixed interval between polling
operations. But then we lose responsiveness.
51
wait() and notify()


In general a more elegant approach is to use the
wait() and notify() families of methods. These are
defined in the Java Object class.
Typically a call to a wait() method puts the calling
thread to sleep until another thread wakes it up
again by calling a notify() method.
• We will speak of wait() putting a thread to sleep inside a
particular object, meaning we use the condition variable
associated with that object. The notify() call that
subsequently wakes the thread must be called on the
same object.
52
wait() and notify() II


In our example, if the queue is currently empty, the
get() method would invoke wait(). This causes the
get() operation to block.
Later when another thread calls add(), putting data
on the queue, the add() method invokes notify() to
wake up any “sleeping” thread. The original get()
call can then return.
53
A Simplified Example
public class Semaphore {
int s ;
public Semaphore(int s) { this.s = s ; }
public synchronized void add() {
s++ ;
notify() ;
}
public synchronized void get() throws InterruptedException {
while(s == 0)
wait() ;
s-- ;
}
}
54
Remarks I

Rather than a linked list we have a simple counter,
which is required always to be non-negative.
• add() increments the counter.
• get() decrements the counter, but if the counter was zero it
blocks until another thread increments the counter.


The data structures are simplified, but the
synchronization features used here are essentially
identical to what would be needed in a blocking
queue (left as an exercise).
Some may recognize this as an implementation of a
classical semaphore—an important synchronization
primitive in its own right.
55
Remarks II

wait() and notify() should be used inside synchronized
methods of the object they are applied to.
• More precisely, the calling thread must hold the object’s
monitor lock.

The wait() operation “pauses” the thread that calls it.
It also releases the lock that the thread holds on the
object, for the duration of the wait() call.
• The lock must be claimed again, before continuing after
the pause.

While the lock is “temporarily” released, another
synchronized method can proceed.
• This method may wake up the first, by calling notify().
56
Remarks III

Several threads can wait() simultaneously in the
same object.
• If any threads are waiting in the object, the notify()
method “wakes up” exactly one of those threads. If no
threads are waiting in the object, notify() does nothing.

Common lore has it that one should always put a
wait() call in a loop, in case the condition that
caused the thread to sleep has not been resolved
when the wait() completes.
• The logic in the example here doesn’t strictly require it—
an if would also work.

A wait() method may throw an InterruptedException
(rethrown by get() in the example). This will be
discussed later.
57
Another Example
public class Barrier {
private int n, generation = 0, count = 0 ;
public Barrier(int n) { this.n = n ; }
public synchronized void synch() throws InterruptedException {
int genNum = generation ;
count++ ;
if(count == n) {
count = 0 ;
generation++ ;
notifyAll() ;
}
else
while(generation == genNum)
wait() ;
}
}
58
Remarks



This class implements barrier synchronization—an important
operation in shared memory parallel programming.
It synchronizes n processes: when n threads make calls to synch()
the first n-1 block until the last one has entered the barrier.
The method notifyAll() generalizes notify(). It wakes up all
threads currently waiting on this object.
• Many authorities consider use of notifyAll() to be “safer” than notify(),
and recommend always to use notifyAll().

In the example, the generation number labels the current,
collective barrier operation: it is only really needed to control the
while loop round wait().
• And this loop is only really needed to conform to the standard pattern of
wait()-usage, mentioned earlier.
59
Final Remarks on Synchronization


We illustrated with a couple of simple examples that
wait() and notify() allow various interesting patterns of
thread synchronization (or thread communication) to
be implemented.
In some sense these primitives are sufficient to
implement “general” concurrent programming—any
pattern of thread synchronization can be implemented
in terms of these primitives.
• For example you can easily implement message passing
between threads (left as an exercise…)

This doesn’t mean these are necessarily the last word in
synchronization: e.g. for scalable parallel processing
one would like a primitive barrier operation more
efficient than the O(n) implementation given above.
60
Other Features of Java
Threads
61
Other Features


This lecture isn’t supposed to cover all the details—for
those you should look at the spec!
But we mention here a few other features you may find
useful.
62
Join Operations

The Thread API has a family of join() operations. These
implement another simple but useful form of
synchronization, by which the current thread can
simply wait for another thread to terminate, e.g.:
Thread child = new MyThread() ;
child.start() ;
… Do something in current thread …
child.join() ;
// wait for child thread to finish
63
Priority and Name

Thread have properties priority and name, which can be
defined by suitable setter methods, before starting the
thread, and accessed by getter methods.
64
Sleeping


You can cause a thread to sleep for a fixed interval
using the sleep() methods.
This operation is distinct from—and less powerful
than—wait(). It is not possible for another thread to
prematurely wake up a thread that was paused using
sleep().
• If you want to sleep for a fixed interval, but allow another
thread to wake you beforehand if necessary, use the variants
of wait() with timeouts instead.
65
Deprecated Thread Methods



There is a family of methods of the Thread class that was
supposed to give “life-or-death” control over threads.
Experience showed these didn’t really work, and killing
threads is no longer considered acceptable in polite society.
If you need to interrupt a running thread, you should explicitly
write the thread it in such a way that it pays attention to
interrupt conditions (see the next slide) and terminates itself.
• If you want to run an arbitrary thread in such a way that it can be
killed and garbage collected by an external agent, you probably need to
fork a separate process, not a thread.

The deprecated methods include stop(), destroy(), suspend(),
and resume().
66
Interrupting Threads

Calling the method interrupt() on a thread instance
requests cancellation of the thread execution.
• This works in an advisory way: the code for the thread must
explicitly test whether it has been interrupted, e.g.:
public void run() {
while(!interrupted())
… do something …
}
Here interrupted() is a static method of the Thread class.
• If the interrupted thread is executing a blocking operation like
wait() or sleep(), the operation will throw an InterruptedException.
Interruptible threads should catch this exception and terminate
themselves.

This mechanism depends on suitable implementation of
the thread body. The programmer must decide at the
outset whether it is important that a particular thread be
responsive to interrupts—often it isn’t.
67
Thread Groups


There is a mechanism for organizing threads into
groups. This may be useful for imposing security
restrictions on which threads can interrupt other
threads, for example.
Check out the API of the ThreadGroup class if you
think this may be important for your application.
68
Thread-Local Variables


An object from the ThreadLocal class stores an
object which has a different, local value in every
thread.
Check the API of the ThreadLocal class for details.
69
Volatile Variables

Suppose a the value of a variable must be accessible by multiple
threads, but you decided you can’t afford the overheads of
synchronized methods or the synchronized statement.
• Presumably effects of race conditions are known to be innocuous.


Java does not guarantee—absent lock operations that force
write-back to main memory—that the value of a variable written
by a one thread will be visible to other threads.
But if you declare a field to be volatile:
volatile int myVariable ;

the JVM is supposed to synchronize the value of any threadlocal (cached) copy of the variable with central storage—making
it visible to all threads—every time the variable is updated.
The exact semantics of volatile variables and the Java memory
model in general is still controversial, see for example:
“A New Approach to the Semantics of Multithreaded Java”,
Jeremy Manson and William Pugh,
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~pugh/java/memoryModel/
70
Threads on Symmetric Multiprocessors

Most modern implementations of the Java Virtual
Machine will map Java threads into native threads of
the underlying operating system.
• For example these may be POSIX threads.



On multiprocessor architectures with shared
memory, these threads can exploit multiple available
processors.
Hence it is possible to do true parallel programming
using Java threads within a single JVM.
See the lectures on Java HPC, cited earlier, for
examples.
71
2) Network
Programming in Java
72
Contents of this Section

Basics of network programming in Java
•
•
•
•

Sockets background
Socket classes, with simple HTTP examples
Internet address classes
URL classes
Overview of New I/O extensions
• Efficient data transfer
• Non-blocking sockets
• Multiplexing (“select”)

JSSE elements
73
Sockets, Addresses and
URLs
74
Sockets


Sockets first appeared in BSD UNIX (designed by
Bill Joy—later a designer of Java) circa 1982.
Cross-protocol API for networking. Original
implementation supported protocols including:
• TCP/IP
• Xerox NS
• Local UNIX inter-process communication.



Today available in all variants of UNIX/Linux,
and in Windows through the WinSock API.
Directly support a client/server architecture.
Support connection-oriented protocols like TCP,
and connectionless protocols like UDP.
75
BSD Socket Calls
Network
Client
socket() : create socket
connect():
write()
: send request
Server
socket(): create socket
bind() : name socket
listen() :
accept(): accept connection
read() : get request
. . . process request . . .
write(): send reply
read()
: get reply
76
Port Numbers


The bind() call on the server side establishes a
well-known address for the listening socket.
In the case of an TCP/IP socket the important
part of this is the port number.
• A port number is an integer between 0 and 64K.
• On any given host, only one server socket can be
listening on a particular port at a particular time.
• In UNIX, port numbers below 1024 can only be used
by a privileged user (the super-user). Any user can
create a server socket listening on higher ports.
• Low port numbers are used by standard services, e.g.:
 23 is the default port number for telnet
 80 is the default port number for HTTP servers
77
Making a Connection

The client makes a connect() call, specifying the
remote host IP address, and the port number for the
server socket it wants to connect to.
• Meanwhile the server is waiting on an accept() call on the
server socket.

When the connection is established, the accept() call
completes, returning a reference to a new socket.
• Data is subsequently exchanged through the socket pair
consisting of the client socket, and the new socket on the
server, returned by the accept() call.
78
Sockets in Java

Using sockets from C is traditionally quite hard. The
arguments of the BSD socket functions are complex.
• Perhaps in part because of the historical need to support
multiple protocols.


Luckily the API has been greatly simplified in the
Java binding for sockets.
The associated classes are in the package java.net.
79
Java Sockets from the Client Side

A Java program can open a socket connection in one
step using a constructor of the Socket class:
Socket t = new Socket(hostName, port) ;
Here hostName is a string, like “grid2004.org”, and
port is an integer, like 80.
• This constructor subsumes the socket() and connect()
calls in the BSD API.

The Socket class has methods getInputStream() and
getOutputStream(), returning Java stream objects
that swap data between the connected socket pair.
• The connection is bi-directional: both client an server can
read and write.
80
A Simple Client
import java.io.* ;
import java.net.* ;
public class TrivialBrowser {
public static void main(String [] args) throws IOException {
Socket s = new Socket(“www.grid2004.org”, 80) ;
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(
new OutputStreamWriter(s.getOutputStream())) ;
out.print("GET /spring2004/index.html HTTP/1.1\r\n") ;
out.print("Host: www.grid2004.org\r\n\r\n") ;
out.flush() ;
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(s.getInputStream())) ;
String line ;
while((line = in.readLine()) != null)
System.out.println(line) ;
}
}
81
Remarks

This implements a (drastically restricted) Web client.

Cut and paste this slide, compile and run the code. It
prints out the HTML source for the course home page.
• It connects to port 80 on the server (the HTTP port).
• It gets an output stream to write to the socket using
getOuputStream().
• It sends an HTTP “GET” request on the stream, specifying
the file it1spring01/index.html relative to the server’s
document root.
• It gets an input stream to read from the socket using
getInputStream().
• It copies lines from the socket connection to the console.
82
Java Sockets from the Server Side



The BSD operations socket(), bind() and listen() for a server-side
socket are subsumed in a constructor for the ServerSocket class:
ServerSocket s = new ServerSocket(port) ;
Here port is the integer port number, such as 80 (if you are
writing a Web server), on which the server will listen.
Next the Java server will call the accept() method and wait for
clients to connect to it. accept() returns an ordinary socket,
completing the socket-pair for the connection:
Socket connection = s.accept() ;
After processing the request, the client goes back to waiting on
accept(), for new client requests.
• “Real” servers typically fork a thread or process to deal with the request,
and return immediately to waiting for the next client connection.
83
A Simple Server
public static void main(String [] args) throws Exception {
ServerSocket server = new ServerSocket(8080) ;
while(true) {
Socket sock = server.accept() ;
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(sock.getInputStream()) ;
String header = in.readLine() ;
. . . Skip over any other lines in request packet . . .
String fileName = … path component from 2nd field of header … ;
DataOutputStream out =
new DataOutputStream(sock.getOutputStream()) ;
if( … file fileName exists… ) {
byte [] bytes = … contents of local file fileName … ;
out.writeBytes(“HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r\n”) ;
out.writeBytes(“Content-Length: ” + bytes.length + “\r\n”) ;
out.writeBytes(“Content-Type: text/html\r\n\r\n”) ;
out.write(bytes) ;
} else { … Send HTTP error status … }
}
}
84
Remarks

This implements a (drastically restricted) Web server.
• It creates a server socket listening to port 8080 on the local
host.
• It gets a socket connection from a client using the accept()
method, and then gets the input stream from the socket using
getInputStream().
• We handle only “GET” requests; the second field will
normally be the file name (preceded by “/”).
• It reads the file (assuming “.” as document root) and writes it
to the output stream of the socket, in HTTP.
• A realistic server would probably spawn a new thread to deal
with each transaction. The main loop would return
immediately to waiting on accept().
85
Other Features of java.net sockets


The Socket and ServerSocket classes provide a bunch
of inquiry methods to determine the socket state.
But there aren’t too many more operations one can
actually perform on sockets
• One notable thing is setting a time out for I/O operations.

Notable things you can’t do include I/O in nonblocking mode, and any kind of select functionality.
• These important features weren’t added until J2SE 1.4, in
the java.nio packages.
• In unaugmented java.net sockets, the closest you can come is
to execute socket operations in dedicated threads.
86
Internet Addresses

The class java.net.InetAddress bundles together
various useful functions on Internet address
• DNS lookup, reverse name resolution, etc.

Example methods
static InetAddress getByName(String host) {…}
static InetAddress getByAddress(byte [] addr) {…}
byte [] getAddress {…}
String getCanonicalHostName() {…}
static InetAddress getLocalHost() {…}

InetAddress objects can be passed to the constructors
of socket classes.
87
URL Objects


Instead of explicitly opening a socket connection to
a Web server, a client can read information using
the higher level URL class.
A constructor takes a URL string and creates a URL
object:
URL url =
new URL(“http://www.grids2004.org/spring2004/”) ;
• This constructor may throw a MalformedURLException.

This class is mostly (only?) useful for clients.
88
Reading a File Using a URL Object

Now if url is a URL object, the resource can be read by
opening a stream on the URL:
BufferedReader in =
new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(url.openStream())) ;

This example creates a character stream that can be
read like any other.
89
URL Connection Objects

A class java.net.URLConnection provides additional
functionality on URLs. A URLConnection is created
by the openConnection() method:
URLConnection connection = url.openConnection() ;

Methods on connection allow to return fields from
the HTTP header:
String getContentType() {…}
int getContentLength() {…}
...

You can also open an InputStream or OutputStream
on a URL connection. The latter is used for HTTP
“POST” requests.
90
UDP in Java


So far discussed use of Java sockets for TCP.
The User Datagram Protocol is an alternative which is
neither connection-oriented nor “reliable”.
• It transports datagrams: messages of fixed (limited) size.
• Messages may occasionally be lost; they may also be
delivered out of order.
• But for applications that don’t need strong guarantees it
can be faster than TCP, e.g. the Internet Domain Naming
Service is implemented over UDP.
• Finally, you have to use UDP if you want to exploit IP
multicast.
91
A UDP Message Producer
import java.net.* ;
public class UDPProducer {
public static void main(String [] args) throws java.io.IOException {
DatagramSocket sock = new DatagramSocket() ;
InetAddress addr = InetAddress.getByName("grids.ucs.indiana.edu") ;
int port = 3516 ;
for(int i = 0 ; i < 10 ; i++) {
String message = "message " + i ;
byte [] data = message.getBytes() ;
DatagramPacket packet =
new DatagramPacket(data, data.length, addr, port) ;
sock.send(packet) ;
}
}
}
92
A UDP Message Consumer
import java.net.* ;
public class UDPConsumer {
public static void main(String [] args) throws java.io.IOException {
int port = 3516 ;
DatagramSocket sock = new DatagramSocket(port) ;
byte [] buffer = new byte [65536] ;
while(true) {
DatagramPacket packet =
new DatagramPacket(buffer, buffer.length) ;
sock.receive(packet) ;
String message =
new String(packet.getData(), 0, packet.getLength()) ;
System.out.println(message) ;
}
}
}
93
Java “New I/O”
94
NIO: New I/O

Prior to the J2SE 1.4 release of Java, I/O had
become a performance bottleneck.
• The old java.io stream classes had too many software
layers to be fast.
• No way to multiplex data from multiple sources without
incurring thread context switches
• No way to exploit modern OS tricks for high
performance I/O, like memory mapped files.

New I/O changed that.
95
Features of New I/O

New I/O provides:
• A hierarchy of dedicated buffer classes that allow data to
be moved from the JVM to the OS with minimal
memory-to-memory copying, and without overheads
like switching byte order—effectively give Java a
“window” on system memory.
• A unified family of channel classes that allow data to be
fed directly from buffers to files and sockets, without
going through the slow old stream classes.
• Non-blocking I/O on sockets.
• A family of classes to directly implement selection (or
readiness testing, or multiplexing) over a set of channels.
• NIO also provides file locking for the first time in Java.
96
References

The Java NIO software is part of J2SE 1.4 and later,
from
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4

Online documentation is at:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/nio

There is an authoritative book from O’Reilly:
“Java NIO”, Ron Hitchens, 2002
97
New I/O Buffers
98
Buffers


A Buffer object is a container for a fixed amount of
data.
It behaves something like a byte [] array, but is
encapsulated so that the internal storage may be a
block of system memory.
• Adding data to, or getting it from, a buffer can be a very
direct way of getting information between a Java program
and the underlying operating system.

All the I/O operations in New I/O operate on these
buffer objects.
99
The java.nio.Buffer Hierarchy
Buffer
CharBuffer
IntBuffer
DoubleBuffer
ShortBuffer
LongBuffer
FloatBuffer
ByteBuffer
MappedByt
eBuffer
100
The ByteBuffer Class



The most important buffer class in practice is the
ByteBuffer class. This represents a fixed-size vector
of primitive bytes.
The storage used internally by the buffer class is
called the backing store.
This backing store can either be an ordinary Java
array, or a block of system memory.
• If it is system memory, the buffer is called a direct buffer.
• Think of “system memory” as meaning something like a C
array allocated by malloc(). It is not memory managed by
the JVM, subject to garbage collection, etc.
101
Creating Buffers

There are various factory methods that can be used to
create a new ByteBuffer, including:
ByteBuffer wrap(byte [] array)
ByteBuffer allocate(int capacity)
ByteBuffer allocateDirect(int capacity)

These are all static methods of the ByteBuffer class:
• wrap() creates a ByteBuffer backed by the Java array
provided by the caller.
• allocate() creates a ByteBuffer backed by an anonymous Java
array, size capacity.
• allocateDirect() creates a direct ByteBuffer, backed by
capacity bytes of system memory.
102
Examples
import java.nio.* ;
public class CreateBuffers {
public static void main(String [] args) {
int BUF_SIZE = 1024 ;
byte [] myBacking = new byte [BUF_SIZE] ;
ByteBuffer buffer1 = ByteBuffer.wrap(myBacking) ;
// Uses array myBacking for storage.
ByteBuffer buffer2 = ByteBuffer.allocate(BUF_SIZE) ;
// Uses buffer2.array() for storage.
ByteBuffer buffer3 = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(BUF_SIZE) ;
// Uses inaccessible system memory for storage.
}
}
103
ByteBuffer Reads and Writes

Has a family of put() and get() methods for writing and
reading the buffer, e.g.:
byte get()
get(byte [] dst)
// Get the next byte in the buffer
// Get the next block of bytes
put(byte b)
put(byte [] src)
// Write b to the next position in buffer
// Write block starting at next position
• I omitted the some of the return types to avoid confusion. These
methods typically return a reference the original— possibly modified—
buffer.

The put() and get() operations shown above are all relative
operations: they get data from, or insert data into, the
buffer, starting at the current position in the buffer.
104
Relative Reads and Writes

The position property works like the file pointer in sequential
file access (but don’t confuse it with a file pointer!)
• The superclass Buffer has methods for explicitly setting the position
and related properties.

There is also a limit property that has a confusing dual role:
• If you are reading a buffer, it should be the total amount of data
previously written to the buffer.
• If you are writing to a buffer, it should normally be the capacity of the
buffer.


Various operations implicitly work on the data between
position and limit.
There are a also get() and put() methods that access bytes at
absolute locations in the buffer, if you need them.
105
Example: Writing and Reading
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(BUF_SIZE) ;
byte [] src = “hello world”.getBytes() ;
buffer.put(src) ;
// Write data to buffer
buffer.flip() ;
// Prepare buffer for “draining”
byte [] dst = new byte [2048] ;
buffer.get(dst, 0, buffer.limit()) ;
// Read data from buffer
System.out.println(new String(dst, 0, buffer.limit())) ;
buffer.clear() ;
// Empty buffer (optional here).
106
Remarks

After you finish writing to a buffer the flip() method can
be used to prepare the buffer for reading.
• Technically, flip() sets limit to the current value of position, and
then sets position to zero.

You can use the get() variant:
get(byte [] dst, int offset, int length)
to read less than dst.length bytes from the buffer.
• Note offset is in the dst array, not the buffer!

You can clear() a buffer if you want to write to it again.
• Technically, clear() sets position to zero, and sets limit to buffer’s
capacity.
107
Other Primitive Types

You can write other primitive types (char, int, double, etc)
to a ByteBuffer by methods like:
ByteBuffer putChar(char value)
ByteBuffer putInt(int value)
…
The putChar() method writes of the 2 bytes in a Java char,
the putInt() methods write 4 bytes, etc.
• There are corresponding getChar(), getInt(), … methods.
• Take care: it is possible to write data as one type and read it as
another.

Raises the question of what byte order the bytes of an int
(say) are written in.
108
Endian-ness

Can map a number (int, double, …) to a sequence of bytes,
with either most significant byte first (big-endian), or least
significant byte first (little-endian).
• Big-Endian: Sun Sparc, PowerPC, numeric fields in IP headers, …
• Little-Endian: Intel processors

In old java.io, numeric types always written big-endian.
• I/O bottleneck if processor is little-endian.

In java.nio, the programmer specifies the byte order as a
property of a ByteBuffer, by calling one of:
myBuffer.order(ByteOrder.BIG_ENDIAN)
myBuffer.order(ByteOrder.LITTLE_ENDIAN)
myBuffer.order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder())
• Latter ensures numeric data can be copied between buffer and JVM
(which uses processor native order) without reformatting.
109
View Buffers


ByteBuffer has no methods for bulk transfer of arrays other
than type byte[].
Instead, create a view of (a portion of) a ByteBuffer as any
other kind of typed buffer, then use the bulk transfer
methods on that view. Following methods of ByteBuffer
create views:
CharBuffer asCharBuffer()
IntBuffer asIntBuffer()
…

To create a view of just a portion of a ByteBuffer, set
position and limit appropriately beforehand—the created
view only covers the region between these.
110
Channels
111
Channels

A channel is a new abstraction in java.nio.
• In the package java.nio.channels.

Channels are like high-level versions of the filedescriptors in UNIX-like operating systems.
• So a channel is a handle for performing I/O operations,
etc, on an open file or socket.

Every java.nio channel has a peer java.io object,
one of:
FileInputStream, FileOutputStream,
RandomAccessFile, Socket,
ServerSocket or DatagramSocket.
• The traditional Java handle objects are still used—the
channel just provides extra NIO-specific functionality.
112
Simplified Channel Hierarchy
<<<Interface>>>
Channel
<<<interface>>>
ByteChannel
FileChannel
DatagramChannel
SelectableChannel
SocketChannel
ServerSocketChannel
Some of the “inheritance” arcs here are indirect: we missed
out some interesting intervening classes and interfaces.
113
Opening A Channel


Socket channel classes have static factory methods
called open(). One form takes a
java.io.InetSocketAddress as argument.
File channels are not created directly; first create a
java.io handle—one of FileInputStream,
FileOutputStream, or RandomAccessFile—then
use the new getChannel() method to get the peer
channel.
114
Examples
import java.nio.* ;
import java.nio.* ;
import java.nio.* ;
public class CreateChannels {
public static void main(String [] args) throws IOException {
InetSocketAddress addr =
new InetSocketAddress("www.grid2004.org", 80) ;
SocketChannel sc = SocketChannel.open(addr) ;
// Create a socket channel.
RandomAccessFile raf =
new RandomAccessFile("CreateChannels.class", "r") ;
FileChannel fc = raf.getChannel() ;
// Get a file channel.
}
}
115
Using Channels

Any channel that implements the ByteChannel
interface (namely all channels except
ServerSocketChannel) provide a read() and a
write() instance method:
int read(ByteBuffer dst)
int write(ByteBuffer src)
• These may look reminiscent of the read() and write()
system calls in UNIX:
int read(int fd, void* buf, int count)
int write(int fd, void* buf, int count)
116
Example: Sending an HTTP Request
int BUF_SIZE = 1024 ;
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(BUF_SIZE) ;
InetSocketAddress addr =
new InetSocketAddress("www.grid2004.org", 80) ;
SocketChannel sc = SocketChannel.open(addr) ;
String request = "GET /spring2004/index.html HTTP/1.1\r\n" +
"Host: www.grid2004.org\r\n\r\n" ;
buffer.put(request.getBytes()) ;
buffer.flip() ;
sc.write(buffer) ;
buffer.clear() ;
117
Example (cont.): Dump Response to a File
FileOutputStream fs =
new FileOutputStream(“response.txt") ;
FileChannel fc = fs.getChannel() ;
while(sc.read(buffer) != -1) {
buffer.flip() ;
while(buffer.hasRemaining())
// position < limit
fc.write(buffer) ;
buffer.clear() ;
}
118
Nonblocking Operations

By calling the method
socket.configureBlocking(false) ;

you put a socket into nonblocking mode.
In non-blocking mode:
• A read() operation only transfers data that is immediately
available. If none, it returns 0.
• If data cannot be immediately written to a socket, a
write() operation will immediately return 0.
• For a server socket, if no client is currently trying to
connect, the accept() method immediately returns null.
• The connect() method is more complicated—negotiation
with the server is always started. Should then poll
channel until finishConnect() returns true.
119
Interruptible Operations


The standard channels in NIO are all interruptible.
If a thread is blocked waiting on a channel, and the
thread’s interrupt() method is called, the channel will
be closed, and the thread will be woken and sent a
ClosedByInterruptException.
• To avoid race conditions, the same will happen if an
operation on a channel is attempted by a thread whose
interrupt status is already true.
• See the lecture on threads for a discussion of interrupts.

This represents progress over traditional Java I/O,
where interruption of blocking operations was not
guaranteed.
120
Other Features of Channels


File channels provide a quite general file locking
facility, but we don’t have space to discuss it here.
There is a special channel implementation
representing a kind of pipe, which can be used for
inter-thread communication.
121
Selectors
122
Readiness Selection

Prior to New I/O, Java provided no standard way of
selecting from a set of possible socket operations just the
ones that are currently ready to proceed.
• Previously one could achieve similar effects in Java by doing
blocking I/O operations in separate threads, then merging the results
through Java thread synchronization. But this can be inefficient
because thread context switching and synchronization is quite slow.


One way of achieving the desired effect in New I/O would be
set all the channels involved to non-blocking mode, and use
a polling loop to wait until some are ready to proceed
(“busy-waiting”).
A more structured—and potentially more efficient—
approach is to use Selectors.
• This corresponds to using the select() system call in many flavors of
UNIX.
123
Classes Involved in Selection



Selection can be done on any channel extending
SelectableChannel—out of the standard channels,
this means the three kinds of socket channel.
The class that supports the select() operation itself is
Selector. This is a sort of container class for the set of
channels in which we are interested.
The last class involved is SelectionKey, which is said
to represent the binding between a channel and a
selector.
• In some sense it is part of the internal representation of the
Selector, but the NIO designers decided to make it an
explicit part of the API.
124
Setting Up Selectors


Create a selector by the open() factory method. This is a static
method of the Selector class.
A channel is added to a selector by calling the method:
SelectionKey register(Selector sel, int ops)
• This (slightly oddly) is an instance method of the SelectableChannel class
(rather than an operation on Selector).
• Here ops is a bit-set representing the interest set for this channel. Created
by oring together one or more of:
SelectionKey.OP_READ
SelectionKey.OP_WRITE
SelectionKey.OP_CONNECT
SelectionKey.OP_ACCEPT
• A channel added to a selector must be in nonblocking mode!

The returned SelectionKey created gets stored in the Selector; in
simple cases you don’t need to save it yourself.
125
Example

Here we create a selector, and register three preexisting channels to the selector:
Selector selector = Selector.open() ;
channel1.register (selector, SelectionKey.OP_READ) ;
channel2.register (selector, SelectionKey.OP_WRITE) ;
channel3.register (selector, SelectionKey.OP_READ |
SelectionKey.OP_WRITE) ;


For channel1 the interest set is reads only, for
channel2 it is writes only, for channel3 it is reads
and writes.
Note all channels must be in non-blocking mode.
126
select() and the Selected Key Set

To inspect the set of channels, to see what operations are
newly ready to proceed, you call the select() method on the
selector.
• This call affects a set of selected keys embedded in the selector.

To use selectors, you must understand that a selector
maintains a Set object representing this selected keys set.
• Because each key is associated with a channel, this is equivalent to a set
of selected channels.
• The set of selected keys is different from (normally a subset of) the
registered key set.
• Each time the select() method is called it may add new keys to the
selected key set, as operations become ready to proceed.
• You, as the programmer, are responsible for explicitly removing keys
from the selected key set inside the selector, as you deal with
operations that have become ready.
127
Ready Sets





There is one more complication.
We saw that each key in the registered key set has an
associated interest set, which is a subset of the 4 possible
operations on sockets.
Similarly each key in the selected key set has an associated
ready set, which is a subset of the interest set—representing
the actual operations that have been found ready to proceed.
Besides adding new keys to the selected key set, a select()
operation may add new operations to the ready set of a key
already in the selected key set.
To probe the ready set of a SelectionKey you can use :
isReadable()
isWriteable()
isConnectable()
isAcceptable()
128
A Pattern for Using select()
… register some channels with selector …
while(true) {
selector.select() ;
Iterator it = selector.selectedKeys().iterator() ;
while( it.hasNext() ) {
SelectionKey key = it.next() ;
if( key.isReadable() )
… perform read() operation on key.channel() …
if( key.isWriteable() )
… perform write() operation on key.channel() …
if( key.isConnectable() )
… perform connect() operation on key.channel() …
if( key.isAcceptable() )
… perform accept() operation on key.channel() …
it.remove() ;
}
}
129
Remarks

More generally, the code that handles a ready
operation may also alter the set of channels
registered with the selector
• e.g. after doing an accept() you may want to register
the returned SocketChannel with the selector, to wait
for read() or write() operations.

In most cases only a subset of the possible
operations read, write, accept, connect are in
interest sets of keys you registered, so you won’t
need all 4 tests.
130
Key Attachments


One problem is that when it.next() returns a key,
there is no convenient way to know which registered
channel it corresponds to.
You can specify an arbitrary object as an attachment
to the key when you create it; later when you get the
key from the selected set, you can extract the
attachment, and use its content to decide which
channel this is and how to treat it.
• At its most basic the attachment might just be an Integer
index identifying the channel.
131
New I/O Conclusion



We briefly visited several topics in New I/O.
New I/O has been widely hailed as an important
step forward in getting serious performance out of
the Java platform.
Besides raw performance, it provides the most
critical I/O and networking functionalities that were
absent in earlier versions of Java.
132