Accessing the request object from a thread inside a servlet - multithreading

I have this code running in a servlet
public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) {
final HttpServletRequest requestF = request;
Runnable runner = new Runnable() {
public void run() {
String something = requestF.getParameter("anything");
//do other things...
}
};
Thread thread = new Thread(runner);
thread.start();
But it throws an Exception when i try to get the parameter from the request object.
Exception in thread "Thread-25" java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.apache.catalina.connector.Request.parseParameters(Request.java:2560)
at org.apache.catalina.connector.Request.getParameter(Request.java:1086)
at org.apache.catalina.connector.RequestFacade.getParameter(RequestFacade.java:355)
at javax.servlet.ServletRequestWrapper.getParameter(ServletRequestWrapper.java:158)
at br.com.test.controller.ajax.MyServlet$1.run(MyServlet.java:54)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)
The requestF object is not null, I've checked.
Does anyone know if i can access the request object inside a new Thread?

Indeed , the Request is not null.
What I suspect that happened is that since you have a reference to the request object, the GC did not collect it.
However, some cleanup code on the parameters (i.e - removing all entries of the request params) was executed, after the response was handled.
I guess this could have happened in order to release memory resources, and not wait for GC, and this is why you're facing this null pointer exception, which is not due to null access to the request object, but to one of the parameters
I would advise you to get the parameters collection, copy it to a new data structure (i.e - a map) and pass it to your thread.
In addtion, you should think if you want your thread to run prior to the response getting sent to the client, but this is purely a design question.

Yes, Zaske is right.
You may copy using a new instance of map object, like this:
final Map<String,String> mapParameters = new HashMap<String,String>();
mapParameters.putAll(request.getParameterMap());
and use mapParameters inside your "run" method:
public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) {
final Map<String,String> mapParameters = new HashMap<String,String>();
mapParameters.putAll(request.getParameterMap());
Runnable runner = new Runnable() {
public void run() {
String something = mapParameters.get("anything");
//do other things...
}
};
Thread thread = new Thread(runner);
thread.start();
}

Related

check asynchronous threads state in java

I have method in class MyClassB which is triggered asynchronously from a method of MyClassA:
public void getProductCall()
{
new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
try {
productRequest = service.createS4ProductRequest(getRepriceItems());
//Below is a rest call to another system
String response = pricing.getS4ProductResponse(quote.getAssetQuoteNrAndVrsn(), productRequest);
//I'm using the below 2 lines to check from ClassA's method to see if this process has ended
setProductResponse(response);
productPriceProcessEnded=true;
} catch (Exception e) {
productPriceErrorOccured=true;
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}).start();
}
This is the piece of code in MyClassA i used to check if the above method is complete.
for(int i=0;i<1000000000;i++)
{
if(!networkAsynCalls.isListPriceErrorOccured())
{
if(networkAsynCalls.isListPriceprocessEnded())
{
return networkAsynCalls.getListReponse();
}
else
{
Thread.sleep(250);
continue;
}
}
else
return null;
}
instead of using this random for loop can i use some inbuilt method or service pool or something ?
Because,
1) This thread on method is in another class
2) In class MyClassB i have few more methods like this, so i need to check the status of all the methods in MyClassA
Thanks for any help.
If I undestand what you're trying to do is dispatch some code to be ran asynchronously, then be able to wait until it is completed (successfully or failed). If that's the case, you should take a look at Futures.
Here is an example based on the Javadoc:
FutureTask<String> future =
new FutureTask<String>(new Callable<String>() {
public String call() {
// do stuff
return "result";
}});
This code creates an object "future" that can be invoked to execute searcher.search(target). At this point, the code is not executed at all. You simply have an object representing a computation that may be executed asynchronously. To do so, you'd call:
ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(5);
executor.execute(future);
This snippet created an Executor (which is a fixed pool of 5 threads), then handed over the future to it for execution. The executor will run the computation from Future asynchronously.
Future offers some methods (see the Javadoc) to wait until completion, cancel, check completion status, etc. For example,
String result = future.get();
will block, waiting for the result indefinitely. A get(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS) will wait for 10 seconds and if the future has not completed, throw.

On servlet 3.0 webserver, is it good to make all servlets and filters async?

I am confused with Async feature introduced in Servlet 3.0 spec
From Oracle site (http://docs.oracle.com/javaee/7/tutorial/doc/servlets012.htm):
To create scalable web applications, you must ensure that no threads
associated with a request are sitting idle, so the container can use
them to process new requests.
There are two common scenarios in which a thread associated with a
request can be sitting idle.
1- The thread needs to wait for a resource to become available or process data before building the response. For example, an application
may need to query a database or access data from a remote web service
before generating the response.
2- The thread needs to wait for an event before generating the response. For example, an application may have to wait for a JMS
message, new information from another client, or new data available in
a queue before generating the response.
The first item happens a lot (nearly always, we always query db or call a remote webservice to get some data). And calling an external resource will always consume some time.
Does it mean that we should ALWAYS use servelt async feature for ALL our servelts and filter ?!
I can ask this way too, if I write all my servelts and filters async, will I lose anything (performance)?!
If above is correct the skeleton of ALL our servlets will be:
public class Work implements ServletContextListener {
private static final BlockingQueue queue = new LinkedBlockingQueue();
private volatile Thread thread;
#Override
public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent servletContextEvent) {
thread = new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
while (true) {
try {
ServiceFecade.doBusiness();
AsyncContext context;
while ((context = queue.poll()) != null) {
try {
ServletResponse response = context.getResponse();
PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
out.printf("Bussiness done");
out.flush();
} catch (Exception e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e.getMessage(), e);
} finally {
context.complete();
}
}
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
return;
}
}
}
});
thread.start();
}
public static void add(AsyncContext c) {
queue.add(c);
}
#Override
public void contextDestroyed(ServletContextEvent servletContextEvent) {
thread.interrupt();
}
}

Why is my call to Azure killing HttpContext.Current

I have an MVC application in which I have a controller that receives data from the user and then uploads a file to Azure blob storage. The application is using Unity IoC to handle dependency injection.
During the workflow I have isolated the following code as demonstrating the problem
public class MvcController : Controller
{
private IDependencyResolver _dependencyResolver;
public MvcController() : this(DependencyResolver.Current)
{
}
public MvcController(IDependencyResolver dependencyResolver)
{
this._dependencyResolver = dependencyResolver;
}
public GetService<T>()
{
T resolved = _dependencyResolver.GetService<T>()
if (resolved == null)
throw new Exception(string.Format("Dependency resolver does not contain service of type {0}", typeof(T).Name));
return resolved;
}
}
public class MyController : MvcController
{
[NoAsyncTimeout]
public async Task<ActionResult> SaveFileAsync(/* A bunch of arguments */)
{
/* A bunch of code */
//This line gets a concrete instance from HttpContext.Current successfully...
IMyObject o = GetService<IMyObject>();
await SaveFileToAzure(/* A bunch of parameters */);
.
.
/* Sometime later */
Method2(/* A bunch of parameters */);
}
private Method2(/* A bunch of parameters */)
{
//This line fails because HttpContext.Current is null
IMyObject o = GetService<IMyObject>();
/* A bunch of other code */
}
private async Task SaveFileToAzure(/* A bunch of parameters */)
{
//Grab a blob container to store the file data...
CloudBlobContainer blobContainer = GetBlobContainer();
ICloudBlob blob = blobContainer.GetBlockBlobReference(somePath);
Stream dataStream = GetData();
System.Threading.CancellationToken cancelToken = GetCancellationToken();
//All calls to DependencyResolver.GetService<T>() after this line of code fail...
response = await blob.UploadStreamAsync(dataStream, cancelToken);
/* A bunch of other code */
}
}
Unity has a registration for my object:
container.RegisterType<IMyObject, MyObject>(new HttpLifetimeManager());
My lifetime manager is defined as follows:
public sealed class HttpRequestLifetimeManager : LifetimeManager
{
public Guid Key { get; private set; }
public HttpRequestLifetimeManager()
{
this.Key = Guid.NewGuid();
}
public override object GetValue()
{
return HttpContext.Current.Items[(object)this.Key];
}
public override void SetValue(object newValue)
{
HttpContext.Current.Items[(object)this.Key] = newValue;
}
public override void RemoveValue()
{
HttpContext.Current.Items.Remove((object)this.Key);
}
}
Nothing complicated.
Stepping into the HttpRequestLifetimeManager on the failing GetService() calls shows that after the UploadStreamAsync() call HttpContext.Current is null...
Has anyone else come across this problem? If so, is this a bug? Is this expected behaviour? Am I doing something out of the ordinary? What should I do to resolve it?
I can hack around it by storing a reference to HttpContext.Current prior to the offending call and restoring it after, but that doesn't seem like the right approach.
Any ideas?
To echo #Joachim - http context may not be available to your async thread. Compare the current thread id where you can see httpcontext is available, to the thread id where you can see that it isn't - i'm assuming you will see they are 2 different threads. If my assumption is correct this may be a sign that your main thread (the one with httpcontext) does not have a "synchronizationcontext". (you can see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pfxteam/archive/2012/01/20/10259049.aspx for more details of how that works) If so, it may mean that the code immediately after your await statement is actually not running on the same thread as the code prior to the await statement! So from your perspective, one moment you have http context and the next you don't because execution has actually been switched to another thread! You should probably look at implementing / setting a synchronizationcontext on your main thread if that's the case and then control will be returned to your original thread with http context and that should fix your problem, or alternatively you could retrieve your object from http context on the original thread and find a way to pass it as a parameter to the async method/s so that they don't need to access http context to get their state.

Java: Running transaction in multithreaded environment

We are launching a website that will have a very heavy volume for a short period of time. It is basically giving tickets. The code is written in Java, Spring & Hibernate. I want to mimic the high volume by spawning multiple threads and trying to get the ticket using JUnit test case. The problem is that in my DAO class the code just simply dies after I begin transaction. I mean there is no error trace in the log file or anything like that. Let me give some idea about the way my code is.
DAO code:
#Repository("customerTicketDAO")
public class CustomerTicketDAO extends BaseDAOImpl {// BaseDAOImpl extends HibernateDaoSupport
public void saveCustomerTicketUsingJDBC(String customerId) {
try{
getSession().getTransaction().begin(); //NOTHING HAPPENS AFTER THIS LINE OF CODE
// A select query
Query query1 = getSession().createSQLQuery("my query omitted on purpose");
.
.
// An update query
Query query2 = getSession().createSQLQuery("my query omitted on purpose");
getSession().getTransaction().commite();
} catch (Exception e) {
}
}
Runnable code:
public class InsertCustomerTicketRunnable implements Runnable {
#Autowired
private CustomerTicketDAO customerTicketDAO;
public InsertCustomerTicketRunnable(String customerId) {
this.customerId = customerId;
}
#Override
public void run() {
if (customerTicketDAO != null) {
customerTicketDAO.saveCustomerTicketUsingJDBC(customerId);
}
}
}
JUnit method:
#RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
#ContextConfiguration(locations={"file:src/test/resources/applicationContext-test.xml"})
public class DatabaseTest {
#Before
public void init() {
sessionFactory = (SessionFactory)applicationContext.getBean("sessionFactory");
Session session = SessionFactoryUtils.getSession(sessionFactory, true);
TransactionSynchronizationManager.bindResource(sessionFactory, new SessionHolder(session));
customerTicketDAO = (CustomerTicketDAO)applicationContext.getBean("customerTicketDAO");
}
#After
public void end() throws Exception {
SessionHolder sessionHolder = (SessionHolder) TransactionSynchronizationManager.unbindResource(sessionFactory);
SessionFactoryUtils.closeSession(session);
}
#Test
public void saveCustomerTicketInMultipleThreads () throws Exception {
ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(NTHREDS);
for (int i=0; i<1000; i++) {
executor.submit(new InsertCustomerTicketRunnable(i));
}
// This will make the executor accept no new threads
// and finish all existing threads in the queue
executor.shutdown();
// Wait until all threads are finish
executor.awaitTermination(1, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}
I see no data being inserted into the database. Can someone please point me as to where I am going wrong?
Thanks
Raj
SessionFactory is thread safe but Session is not. So my guess is that you need to call SessionFactoryUtils.getSession() from within each thread, so that each thread gets its own instance. You are currently calling it from the main thread, so all children threads try to share the same instance.
Naughty, naughty!
public void saveCustomerTicketUsingJDBC(String customerId) {
try {
getSession().getTransaction().begin(); //NOTHING HAPPENS AFTER THIS LINE OF CODE
.
.
} catch (Exception e) {
}
}
You should never (well, hardly ever) have an empty catch block, if there is a problem you will find that your code 'just simply dies' with no log messages. Oh look, that's what's happening ;)
At the very minimum you should log the exception, that will go a long way towards you helping you find what the problem is (and from there, the solution).

Timeout individual threads of cached thread pool

I want to use a thread pool in a web application which should support large number of users concurrently (~3000 users). I am invoking a web service in a separate thread which I am executing using a thread pool. Whenever the web service is not able to send the response, the thread gets stuck. So I want to stop/timeout the thread after 150 Milli-seconds. This is what I am doing right now:
the custom thread:
public class RetrieveDocTask implements Runnable {
public void run() {
//gather variables
//invoke webservice
}}
The filter which executes the threads:
public class DocFilter implements Filter {
private static ExecutorService executor = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {
RetrieveDocTask task=new RetrieveDocTask();
executor.execute(task);
}}
I browsed the internet for solutions and none of them worked for me. Some said use Future and callable while some asked to create ThreadPoolExecutor and specify the timeout. Don't know why it was not working.
Also, will it be fine to use cached pool executor for large number of users. I am new to this and need to implement it as soon as possible.
Indeed a Future is what you need here. Suppose that your class RetriveDoc returns a string actually.
private static final class RetrieveDoc implements Callable<String>{
#Override
public String call() throws Exception {
//do some computation and retirieve doc
return "DocAsString";
}
}
ExecutorService service = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(1);
Future<String> futureResponse = service.submit(new RetrieveDoc());
//this will blokc for only 150 milliseconds
String response = null;
try{
response = futureResponse.get(150, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
} catch(TimeoutException e){
System.out.println("TimeoutException happended");
}
if(response == null){
//do something
}

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