Android mediator pattern with threads

Question

I got the following problem:

I want to use the mediator pattern for an app.

I got a producer that creates values. I got a mediator that stores the values in a queue(which is private, so getters and setters exist) and notifices the consumer that there are new values in the queue. I got the consumer, that gets notified about a new value, gets it and does stuff with it...

I want all 3 classes to run on own threads. But I also want to be efficient.

If I understand it right, my mediator thread will be GCed when run() ends... so I would need to keep it alive by a loop, don't I? Like while(true), but this is not very efficient. Is there a better way? Or am I totally incorrect and the mediator wouldn't be GCed?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You're right that once your mediator object's run() method returns, the thread will terminate. But that doesn't mean that the mediator will be GCed; if there is a live reference to your mediator object, it won't be. However, if the thread has exited, the mediator won't be particularly useful. A while(true) loop is one way to deal with this. A while(true) loop is not necessarily inefficient. It could easily work by calling wait() on some object until new stuff appears in the queue. The thread will be in a wait state and will not consume cpu resources.