Stopping a thread after a certain amount of time

user_775302 0
Viewed 111935

I'm looking to terminate some threads after a certain amount of time. These threads will be running an infinite while loop and during this time they can stall for a random, large amount of time. The thread cannot last longer than time set by the duration variable. How can I make it so after the length set by duration, the threads stop.

def main():
    t1 = threading.Thread(target=thread1, args=1)
    t2 = threading.Thread(target=thread2, args=2)

    time.sleep(duration)
    #the threads must be terminated after this sleep
multithreading python
4 Answers

If you want to use a class:

from datetime import datetime,timedelta

class MyThread(): 

    def __init__(self, name, timeLimit):        
        self.name = name
        self.timeLimit = timeLimit
    def run(self): 
        # get the start time
        startTime = datetime.now()
    
        while True:
           # stop if the time limit is reached :
           if((datetime.now()-startTime)>self.timeLimit):
               break
           print('A')

mt = MyThread('aThread',timedelta(microseconds=20000))
mt.run()
user_91474390

An alternative is to use signal.pthread_kill to send a stop signal. While it's not as robust as @Nix's answer (and I don't think it will work on Windows), it works in cases where Events don't (e.g., stopping a Flask server).

test.py

from signal import pthread_kill, SIGTSTP
from threading import Thread

import time

DURATION = 5


def thread1(arg):
    while True:
        print(f"processing {arg} from thread1...")
        time.sleep(1)


def thread2(arg):
    while True:
        print(f"processing {arg} from thread2...")
        time.sleep(1)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    t1 = Thread(target=thread1, args=(1,))
    t2 = Thread(target=thread2, args=(2,))

    t1.start()
    t2.start()
    time.sleep(DURATION)
    # stops all threads
    pthread_kill(t2.ident, SIGTSTP)

result

$ python test.py
processing 1 from thread1...
processing 2 from thread2...
processing 1 from thread1...
processing 2 from thread2...
processing 1 from thread1...
processing 2 from thread2...
processing 1 from thread1...
processing 2 from thread2...
processing 1 from thread1...
processing 2 from thread2...

[19]+  Stopped                 python test.py
user_4085560
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