Replace a TableView with a ProgressIndicator within VBox JavaFX - multithreading

Question

I have a TableView associated with some data, and once i hit a run button i perform some processing on that data. Each row of data is handled in a seperate thread, and while those threads are running i want a ProgressInducator to replace the table within its vbox.
In the attached code:
If I stop where is says "WORKS IF STOP HERE" - table is replaced with pi.
If I continue waiting for the threads to join - no replacing.
What am I missing?
runButton.setOnAction(
new EventHandler<ActionEvent>() {
#Override
public void handle(final ActionEvent e) {
List<Thread> threadList = new ArrayList<Thread>();
int threadCounter = 0;
final ProgressIndicator pi = new ProgressIndicator(threadCounter);
vbox.getChildren().clear();
vbox.getChildren().addAll(pi);
for (ProductInTable product : data) {
Thread thread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
try
{
product.calculate();
} catch (IOException ioe) {
ioe.printStackTrace();
}
}
});
threadList.add(thread);
thread.start();
}
int x = threadList.size();
/** WORKS IF STOP HERE **/
// wait for all threads to end
for (Thread t : threadList) {
try {
t.join();
threadCounter++;
pi.setProgress(threadCounter / x);
} catch (InterruptedException interE) {
interE.printStackTrace();
}
}
/** DOESNT WORKS IF STOP HERE **/

Answer 1

Thread.join() blocks execution until the thread is completed. Since you are calling this on the FX Application Thread, you block that thread until all your worker threads finish. This means the UI is unable to update until those threads are complete.
A better approach is probably to represent each computation with a task, and update a counter of complete tasks back on the FX Application Thread using setOnSucceeded. Something like:
runButton.setOnAction(
new EventHandler<ActionEvent>() {
#Override
public void handle(final ActionEvent e) {
final ProgressIndicator pi = new ProgressIndicator(threadCounter);
vbox.getChildren().clear();
vbox.getChildren().addAll(pi);
final int numTasks = data.size();
// only access from FX Application thread:
final IntegerProperty completedTaskCount = new SimpleIntegerProperty(0);
pi.progressProperty().bind(completedTaskCount.divide(1.0*numTasks));
completedTaskCount.addListener(new ChangeListener<Number>() {
#Override
public void changed(ObservableValue<? extends Number> obs, Number oldValue, Number newValue) {
if (newValue.intValue() >= numTasks) {
// hide progress indicator and show table..
}
}
});
for (final ProductInTable product : data) {
Task<Void> task = new Task<Void>() {
#Override
public Void call() {
try
{
product.calculate();
} catch (IOException ioe) {
ioe.printStackTrace();
}
return null ;
}
});
task.setOnSucceeded(new EventHandler<WorkerStateEvent>() {
#Override
public void handle(WorkerStateEvent event) {
completedTaskCount.set(completedTaskCount.get()+1);
}
});
new Thread(task).start();
}
}
});
If you potentially have a large number of items here, you should use some kind of ExecutorService instead to avoid creating too many threads:
ExecutorService exec = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(
Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors()); // for example...
and then replace
new Thread(task).start();
with
exec.submit(task);