Java have thread return something to main thread

Question

I'm stuck on something, and can't seem to think of a solution. I have a function called dbSelect, which then creates a thread to run a MySQL query and get a ResultSet , but then I need my dbSelect to get that ResultSet and return it. Here's what I have:

public class Utils {
    public static void dbSelect(String query){
        selectQuery = query;
        Thread selectThread = new selectThreadClass();
        selectThread.start();
    }
}
class selectThreadClass extends Thread {
    public void run(){
        perform();
    }

    public ResultSet perform(){
        Connection conn = null;
        try {
            Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance();
            conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://localhost/lob/?user=root&password=");

            Statement s = conn.createStatement();
            ResultSet rs = s.executeQuery(Utils.selectQuery);
            return rs;
        }catch (SQLException | InstantiationException | IllegalAccessException | ClassNotFoundException e){
            e.printStackTrace();
            return null;
        }
    }
}

Can anyone help me get it so that dbSelect returns the ResultSet from the thread? Thanks!

Answer 1

Use Callable

 public interface Callable<V> {
 V call() throws Exception;
}

Answer 2

Instead of Runnable Use callable.

public class SelectCallableClass implements Callable<ResultSet> {

    public ResultSet call() throws Exception {
        return perform();
    }

    public ResultSet perform(){
        Connection conn = null;
        try {
            Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance();
            conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://localhost/lob/?user=root&password=");

            Statement s = conn.createStatement();
            ResultSet rs = s.executeQuery(Utils.selectQuery);
            return rs;
        }catch (SQLException | InstantiationException | IllegalAccessException | ClassNotFoundException e){
            e.printStackTrace();
            return null;
        }
    }
}

To submit Callable class, use the ExecuterService

ExecutorService service=Executors.newFixedThreadPool(1);
Future future=service.submit(new SelectCallableClass());

The above code does the following(from doc).Submits a value-returning task for execution and returns a Future> representing the pending results of the task. The Future's get method will return the task's result upon successful completion.

Answer 3

just a try from my end

I modified the code and got the solution using List to hold the value from the ResultSet but I just have one question and that is, I was not able to get the result as type (ResultSet) in Callable

Somehow the result set was empty when I tried to retrieve the value using the future get() function

ResultSet rs = (ResultSet)future.get();

Below is the piece of code which didnt work,

ExecutorService service=Executors.newFixedThreadPool(1);
Callable<ResultSet> callable = new SelectThreadResultSet();
Future<ResultSet> future = service.submit(callable);
ResultSet rs = (ResultSet)future.get();
// Here I dont get any values
while(rs.next()){
    System.out.println(rs.getString("EMPLOYEE"));
}

Please find below the solution which worked for me, I used List to hold the values and returned it.

class SelectThreadClass:

public class SelectThreadClass implements Callable<List<String>> {

    public List<String> call(){
        ResultSet rs = null;
        List<String> strList = new ArrayList<String>();
        try {
            rs  = perform();
            while(rs.next()){
                strList.add(rs.getString("EMPNAME"));
            }
            System.out.println("Passed");

        } catch (InstantiationException | IllegalAccessException | SQLException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return strList;
    }

    public ResultSet perform() throws InstantiationException, IllegalAccessException, SQLException{
        Connection conn = null;
        try {
            Class.forName("org.sqlite.JDBC");
            try {
                conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:sqlite:C:\\SqlLite\\EMPLOYEE.db");
            } catch (Exception e) {
                // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                e.printStackTrace();
            }

            Statement s = null;
            try {
                s = conn.createStatement();
            } catch (Exception e) {
                // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
            ResultSet rs = null;
            try {
                rs = s.executeQuery(Utils.selectQuery);
            } catch (Exception e) {
                // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
            return rs;
        }catch (ClassNotFoundException e){
            e.printStackTrace();
            return null;
        }
    }
}

class Utils:

public class Utils {

    public static String selectQuery = "SELECT EMPNAME FROM EMPLOYEEDETAILS";
    public static void dbSelect(String query) throws InterruptedException, ExecutionException, SQLException{
        ExecutorService service=Executors.newFixedThreadPool(1);
        Callable<List<String>> callable = new SelectThreadClass();

        Future<List<String>> future = service.submit(callable);

        List<String> empList = future.get();
        for(String emp : empList){
            System.out.println(emp);
        }
    }

    public static void main(String args[]) throws InterruptedException, ExecutionException, SQLException{
        dbSelect("SELECT EMPNAME FROM EMPLOYEEDETAILS");
    }

}

Answer 4

run does not return a result.
Either use al Callable or use a shared variable and poll/ wait in Utils until the result from the SelectThreadClass is available.
But I recommend to use a Callable as it fits exactly for the task

Answer 5

You can simply have an attribute in your Thread class and then get hold of that attribute,

public class Utils {
    public static void dbSelect(String query){
        selectQuery = query;
        Thread selectThread = new selectThreadClass();
        selectThread.start();

        ((SelectThreadClass) selectThread).getResult();
    }
}

class selectThreadClass extends Thread {
    ResultSet rs = null;

    public ResultSet getResult(){
        return rs;
    }

    public void run(){
        rs = perform();
    }

    public ResultSet perform(){
        Connection conn = null;
        try {
            Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance();
            conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://localhost/lob/?user=root&password=");

            Statement s = conn.createStatement();
            return s.executeQuery(Utils.selectQuery);
        } catch (SQLException | InstantiationException | IllegalAccessException | ClassNotFoundException e){
            e.printStackTrace();
            return null;
        }
    }
}

the only problem is that you might end up handling the connection closure and other stuff out of your dbutil, alternatively , you can convert the result set to whatever java class and then return that java object list rather result set