How to timeout a thread

Indeed rather use ExecutorService instead of Timer, here's an SSCCE:

package com.stackoverflow.q2275443;

import java.util.concurrent.Callable;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;
import java.util.concurrent.Future;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeoutException;

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        ExecutorService executor = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
        Future<String> future = executor.submit(new Task());

        try {
            System.out.println("Started..");
            System.out.println(future.get(3, TimeUnit.SECONDS));
            System.out.println("Finished!");
        } catch (TimeoutException e) {
            future.cancel(true);
            System.out.println("Terminated!");
        }

        executor.shutdownNow();
    }
}

class Task implements Callable<String> {
    @Override
    public String call() throws Exception {
        Thread.sleep(4000); // Just to demo a long running task of 4 seconds.
        return "Ready!";
    }
}

Play a bit with the timeout argument in Future#get() method, e.g. increase it to 5 and you'll see that the thread finishes. You can intercept the timeout in the catch (TimeoutException e) block.

Update: to clarify a conceptual misunderstanding, the sleep() is not required. It is just used for SSCCE/demonstration purposes. Just do your long running task right there in place of sleep(). Inside your long running task, you should be checking if the thread is not interrupted as follows:

while (!Thread.interrupted()) {
    // Do your long running task here.
}

There isn't a 100% reliable way to do this for any old task. The task has to be written with this ability in mind.

Core Java libraries like ExecutorService cancel asynchronous tasks with interrupt() calls on the worker thread. So, for example, if the task contains some sort of loop, you should be checking its interrupt status on each iteration. If the task is doing I/O operations, they should be interruptible too—and setting that up can be tricky. In any case, keep in mind that code has to actively check for interrupts; setting an interrupt doesn't necessarily do anything.

Of course, if your task is some simple loop, you can just check the current time at each iteration and give up when a specified timeout has elapsed. A worker thread isn't needed in that case.

Consider using an instance of ExecutorService. Both invokeAll() and invokeAny() methods are available with a timeout parameter.

The current thread will block until the method completes (not sure if this is desirable) either because the task(s) completed normally or the timeout was reached. You can inspect the returned Future(s) to determine what happened.

BalusC said:

Update: to clarify a conceptual misunderstanding, the sleep() is not required. It is just used for SSCCE/demonstration purposes. Just do your long running task right there in place of sleep().

But if you replace Thread.sleep(4000); with for (int i = 0; i < 5E8; i++) {} then it doesn't compile, because the empty loop doesn't throw an InterruptedException.

And for the thread to be interruptible, it needs to throw an InterruptedException.

This seems like a serious problem to me. I can't see how to adapt this answer to work with a general long-running task.

Edited to add: I reasked this as a new question: [ interrupting a thread after fixed time, does it have to throw InterruptedException? ]

I think you should take a look at proper concurrency handling mechanisms (threads running into infinite loops doesn't sound good per se, btw). Make sure you read a little about the "killing" or "stopping" Threads topic.

What you are describing,sound very much like a "rendezvous", so you may want to take a look at the CyclicBarrier.

There may be other constructs (like using CountDownLatch for example) that can resolve your problem (one thread waiting with a timeout for the latch, the other should count down the latch if it has done it's work, which would release your first thread either after a timeout or when the latch countdown is invoked).

I usually recommend two books in this area: Concurrent Programming in Java and Java Concurrency in Practice.

I post you a piece of code which show a way how to solve the problem. As exemple I'm reading a file. You could use this method for another operation, but you need to implements the kill() method so that the main operation will be interrupted.

hope it helps

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;

/**
 * Main class
 * 
 * @author el
 * 
 */
public class Main {
    /**
     * Thread which perform the task which should be timed out.
     * 
     * @author el
     * 
     */
    public static class MainThread extends Thread {
        /**
         * For example reading a file. File to read.
         */
        final private File fileToRead;
        /**
         * InputStream from the file.
         */
        final private InputStream myInputStream;
        /**
         * Thread for timeout.
         */
        final private TimeOutThread timeOutThread;

        /**
         * true if the thread has not ended.
         */
        boolean isRunning = true;

        /**
         * true if all tasks where done.
         */
        boolean everythingDone = false;

        /**
         * if every thing could not be done, an {@link Exception} may have
         * Happens.
         */
        Throwable endedWithException = null;

        /**
         * Constructor.
         * 
         * @param file
         * @throws FileNotFoundException
         */
        MainThread(File file) throws FileNotFoundException {
            setDaemon(false);
            fileToRead = file;
            // open the file stream.
            myInputStream = new FileInputStream(fileToRead);
            // Instantiate the timeout thread.
            timeOutThread = new TimeOutThread(10000, this);
        }

        /**
         * Used by the {@link TimeOutThread}.
         */
        public void kill() {
            if (isRunning) {
                isRunning = false;
                if (myInputStream != null) {
                    try {
                        // close the stream, it may be the problem.
                        myInputStream.close();
                    } catch (IOException e) {
                        // Not interesting
                        System.out.println(e.toString());
                    }
                }
                synchronized (this) {
                    notify();
                }
            }
        }

        /**
         * The task which should be timed out.
         */
        @Override
        public void run() {
            timeOutThread.start();
            int bytes = 0;
            try {
                // do something
                while (myInputStream.read() >= 0) {
                    // may block the thread.
                    myInputStream.read();
                    bytes++;
                    // simulate a slow stream.
                    synchronized (this) {
                        wait(10);
                    }
                }
                everythingDone = true;
            } catch (IOException e) {
                endedWithException = e;
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                endedWithException = e;
            } finally {
                timeOutThread.kill();
                System.out.println("-->read " + bytes + " bytes.");
                isRunning = false;
                synchronized (this) {
                    notifyAll();
                }
            }
        }
    }

    /**
     * Timeout Thread. Kill the main task if necessary.
     * 
     * @author el
     * 
     */
    public static class TimeOutThread extends Thread {
        final long timeout;
        final MainThread controlledObj;

        TimeOutThread(long timeout, MainThread controlledObj) {
            setDaemon(true);
            this.timeout = timeout;
            this.controlledObj = controlledObj;
        }

        boolean isRunning = true;

        /**
         * If we done need the {@link TimeOutThread} thread, we may kill it.
         */
        public void kill() {
            isRunning = false;
            synchronized (this) {
                notify();
            }
        }

        /**
         * 
         */
        @Override
        public void run() {
            long deltaT = 0l;
            try {
                long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
                while (isRunning && deltaT < timeout) {
                    synchronized (this) {
                        wait(Math.max(100, timeout - deltaT));
                    }
                    deltaT = System.currentTimeMillis() - start;
                }
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                // If the thread is interrupted,
                // you may not want to kill the main thread,
                // but probably yes.
            } finally {
                isRunning = false;
            }
            controlledObj.kill();
        }
    }

    /**
     * Start the main task and wait for the end.
     * 
     * @param args
     * @throws FileNotFoundException
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException {
        long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
        MainThread main = new MainThread(new File(args[0]));
        main.start();
        try {
            while (main.isRunning) {
                synchronized (main) {
                    main.wait(1000);
                }
            }
            long stop = System.currentTimeMillis();

            if (main.everythingDone)
                System.out.println("all done in " + (stop - start) + " ms.");
            else {
                System.out.println("could not do everything in "
                        + (stop - start) + " ms.");
                if (main.endedWithException != null)
                    main.endedWithException.printStackTrace();
            }
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            System.out.println("You've killed me!");
        }
    }
}

Regards

In the solution given by BalusC, the main thread will stay blocked for the timeout period. If you have a thread pool with more than one thread, you will need the same number of additional thread that will be using Future.get(long timeout,TimeUnit unit) blocking call to wait and close the thread if it exceeds the timeout period.

A generic solution to this problem is to create a ThreadPoolExecutor Decorator that can add the timeout functionality. This Decorator class should create as many threads as ThreadPoolExecutor has, and all these threads should be used only to wait and close the ThreadPoolExecutor.

The generic class should be implemented like below:

import java.util.List;
import java.util.concurrent.*;

public class TimeoutThreadPoolDecorator extends ThreadPoolExecutor {


    private final ThreadPoolExecutor commandThreadpool;
    private final long timeout;
    private final TimeUnit unit;

    public TimeoutThreadPoolDecorator(ThreadPoolExecutor threadpool,
                                      long timeout,
                                      TimeUnit unit ){
        super(  threadpool.getCorePoolSize(),
                threadpool.getMaximumPoolSize(),
                threadpool.getKeepAliveTime(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS),
                TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS,
                threadpool.getQueue());

        this.commandThreadpool = threadpool;
        this.timeout=timeout;
        this.unit=unit;
    }

    @Override
    public void execute(Runnable command) {
        super.execute(() -> {
            Future<?> future = commandThreadpool.submit(command);
            try {
                future.get(timeout, unit);
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
            } catch (ExecutionException | TimeoutException e) {
                throw new RejectedExecutionException(e);
            } finally {
                future.cancel(true);
            }
        });
    }

    @Override
    public void setCorePoolSize(int corePoolSize) {
        super.setCorePoolSize(corePoolSize);
        commandThreadpool.setCorePoolSize(corePoolSize);
    }

    @Override
    public void setThreadFactory(ThreadFactory threadFactory) {
        super.setThreadFactory(threadFactory);
        commandThreadpool.setThreadFactory(threadFactory);
    }

    @Override
    public void setMaximumPoolSize(int maximumPoolSize) {
        super.setMaximumPoolSize(maximumPoolSize);
        commandThreadpool.setMaximumPoolSize(maximumPoolSize);
    }

    @Override
    public void setKeepAliveTime(long time, TimeUnit unit) {
        super.setKeepAliveTime(time, unit);
        commandThreadpool.setKeepAliveTime(time, unit);
    }

    @Override
    public void setRejectedExecutionHandler(RejectedExecutionHandler handler) {
        super.setRejectedExecutionHandler(handler);
        commandThreadpool.setRejectedExecutionHandler(handler);
    }

    @Override
    public List<Runnable> shutdownNow() {
        List<Runnable> taskList = super.shutdownNow();
        taskList.addAll(commandThreadpool.shutdownNow());
        return taskList;
    }

    @Override
    public void shutdown() {
        super.shutdown();
        commandThreadpool.shutdown();
    }
}

The above decorator can be used as below:

import java.util.concurrent.SynchronousQueue;
import java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args){

        long timeout = 2000;

        ThreadPoolExecutor threadPool = new ThreadPoolExecutor(3, 10, 0, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS, new SynchronousQueue<>(true));

        threadPool = new TimeoutThreadPoolDecorator( threadPool ,
                timeout,
                TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);


        threadPool.execute(command(1000));
        threadPool.execute(command(1500));
        threadPool.execute(command(2100));
        threadPool.execute(command(2001));

        while(threadPool.getActiveCount()>0);
        threadPool.shutdown();


    }

    private static Runnable command(int i) {

        return () -> {
            System.out.println("Running Thread:"+Thread.currentThread().getName());
            System.out.println("Starting command with sleep:"+i);
            try {
                Thread.sleep(i);
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                System.out.println("Thread "+Thread.currentThread().getName()+" with sleep of "+i+" is Interrupted!!!");
                return;
            }
            System.out.println("Completing Thread "+Thread.currentThread().getName()+" after sleep of "+i);
        };

    }
}

One thing that I've not seen mentioned is that killing threads is generally a Bad Idea. There are techniques for making threaded methods cleanly abortable, but that's different to just killing a thread after a timeout.

The risk with what you're suggesting is that you probably don't know what state the thread will be in when you kill it - so you risk introducing instability. A better solution is to make sure your threaded code either doesn't hang itself, or will respond nicely to an abort request.

The following snippet will start an operation in a separate thread, then wait for up to 10 seconds for the operation to complete. If the operation does not complete in time, the code will attempt to cancel the operation, then continue on its merry way. Even if the operation cannot be cancelled easily, the parent thread will not wait for the child thread to terminate.

ExecutorService executorService = getExecutorService();
Future<SomeClass> future = executorService.submit(new Callable<SomeClass>() {
    public SomeClass call() {
        // Perform long-running task, return result. The code should check
        // interrupt status regularly, to facilitate cancellation.
    }
});
try {
    // Real life code should define the timeout as a constant or
    // retrieve it from configuration
    SomeClass result = future.get(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
    // Do something with the result
} catch (TimeoutException e) {
    future.cancel(true);
    // Perform other error handling, e.g. logging, throwing an exception
}

The getExecutorService() method can be implemented in a number of ways. If you do not have any particular requirements, you can simply call Executors.newCachedThreadPool() for thread pooling with no upper limit on the number of threads.

I think the answer mainly depends on the task itself.

• Is it doing one task over and over again?
• Is it necessary that the timeout interrupts a currently running task immediately after it expires?

If the first answer is yes and the second is no, you could keep it as simple as this:

public class Main {

    private static final class TimeoutTask extends Thread {
        private final long _timeoutMs;
        private Runnable _runnable;

        private TimeoutTask(long timeoutMs, Runnable runnable) {
            _timeoutMs = timeoutMs;
            _runnable = runnable;
        }

        @Override
        public void run() {
            long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
            while (System.currentTimeMillis() < (start + _timeoutMs)) {
                _runnable.run();
            }
            System.out.println("execution took " + (System.currentTimeMillis() - start) +" ms");
        }

    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        new TimeoutTask(2000L, new Runnable() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                System.out.println("doing something ...");
                try {
                    // pretend it's taking somewhat longer than it really does
                    Thread.sleep(100);
                } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                    throw new RuntimeException(e);
                }
            }
        }).start();
    }
}

If this isn't an option, please narrow your requirements - or show some code.