Remotely get notifications in order to update a progress monitor

Question

I have a complex application containing a server and a frontend part.

I am trying in the frontend part to update a progress monitor according to an action that takes place in the server part. The action from the server part is called remotely from the frontend. But I am having trouble getting the notifications real time to update the monitor.

My code structure looks somewhat like this:

class frontend_class1{
       public void method {
          List<String> strings = initializeStrings();
          progressMonitor.begingTask("", noOfSteps);
          reponse = frontend_class2.method2(strings);
          progressMonitor.worked(1);
       }

class frontend_class2{
       public responseType method2(List<String> strings){
          ServerClassRemote remote = new ServerClassRemote();
          response = remote.serverMethod(strings);
          return response;
       }

class server_class{
       public serverMethod(List<String> strings){
          otherMethod(strings);
       }
       public otherMethod(List<String> strings){
          someOtherMethod(strings);
       }
       public someOtherMethod(List<String> strings){
          for (String s:Strings){
              doSomethingWithString(s);
              setStatus(true);
          }
       }
       public setStatus(boolean status){
          myVar = status;
       }
       public boolean getStatus(){
          return status;
       }

My intention is to send a notification to the frontend from the server side, so that the progress monitor is updated with one each time a string is done with.

That is why I included the status methods: to ask from the frontend what the status is, in a separate thread running, theoretically, simultaneously with the other method (serverMethod) and then resetting the status. Something like this:

new Thread(new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
                if (remote.getChanged()) {
                    remote.setChanged(false);
                }
            }
        }).start();

But they don't run concurrently. How could I get the status each time a string from the list is finished so that I can update my progress monitor?

Answer 1

Instead of just setting the status is someOtherMethod you could send the update report with a new thread to the front end. If you do not have a way of sending this update yet you will probably need to have the fornt_end run some kind of server to receive at least these messages. Maybe some RMI, should be easy enough to implement.