Why does SwingUtilities.invokeLater() cause JButton to freeze?

Question

Consider this basic Swing program, consisting out of two buttons:

public class main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        JFrame jf = new JFrame("hi!");
        JPanel mainPanel = new JPanel(new GridLayout());
        JButton longAction = new JButton("long action");
        longAction.addActionListener(event -> doLongAction());
        JButton testSystemOut = new JButton("test System.out");
        testSystemOut.addActionListener(event -> System.out.println("this is a test"));
        mainPanel.add(longAction);
        mainPanel.add(testSystemOut);
        jf.add(mainPanel);
        jf.pack();
        jf.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        jf.setVisible(true);
    }

    public static void doLongAction() {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(() -> {
            try {
                Thread.sleep(3000);
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                System.out.println("Interrupted!");
            }
            System.out.println("Finished long action");
        });

    }
}

I want my second button testSystemOut to be usable while the first one is working on its long action (here, I put a 3 second sleep in it). I can do that by manually putting doLongAction() in a Thread and call start(). But I've read I should use SwingUtilities instead, which works exactly like EventQueue here. However, if I do so, my Button freezes for the duration of its action.

Why?

Hovercraft Full Of Eels · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-22T22:03:55.277

By using SwingUtilities.invokeLater, you are calling the enclosed code, including the Thread.sleep(...) call, on the Swing event thread, which is something you should never do since it puts the entire event thread, the thread responsible for drawing your GUI's and responding to user input, to sleep -- i.e., it freezes your application. Solution: use a Swing Timer instead or do your sleeping in a background thread. If you are calling long-running code and using a Thread.sleep(...) to simulate it, then use a SwingWorker to do your background work for you. Please read Concurrency in Swing for the details on this. Note that there is no reason for the SwingUtilities.invokeLater where you have it since the ActionListener code will be called on the EDT (the Swing event thread) regardless. I would however use SwingUtilities.invokeLater where you create your GUI.

e.g.,

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.beans.PropertyChangeEvent;
import java.beans.PropertyChangeListener;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException;
import javax.swing.*;

public class Main {

   public static void main(String[] args) {
      SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
         @Override
         public void run() {
            JFrame jf = new JFrame("hi!");
            JPanel mainPanel = new JPanel(new GridLayout());
            JButton testSystemOut = new JButton("test System.out");
            testSystemOut.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {

               @Override
               public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                  System.out.println("this is a test");
               }
            });
            mainPanel.add(new JButton(new LongAction("Long Action")));
            mainPanel.add(new JButton(new TimerAction("Timer Action")));
            mainPanel.add(testSystemOut);
            jf.add(mainPanel);
            jf.pack();          
            jf.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
            jf.setVisible(true);
         }
      });
   }

   @SuppressWarnings("serial")
   public static class LongAction extends AbstractAction {
      private LongWorker longWorker = null;

      public LongAction(String name) {
         super(name);
         int mnemonic = (int) name.charAt(0);
         putValue(MNEMONIC_KEY, mnemonic);
      }

      @Override
      public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
         setEnabled(false);
         longWorker = new LongWorker(); // create a new SwingWorker

         // add listener to respond to completion of the worker's work
         longWorker.addPropertyChangeListener(new LongWorkerListener(this));

         // run the worker
         longWorker.execute();
      }
   }

   public static class LongWorker extends SwingWorker<Void, Void> {
      private static final long SLEEP_TIME = 3 * 1000;

      @Override
      protected Void doInBackground() throws Exception {
         Thread.sleep(SLEEP_TIME);

         System.out.println("Finished with long action!");
         return null;
      }
   }

   public static class LongWorkerListener implements PropertyChangeListener {
      private LongAction longAction;

      public LongWorkerListener(LongAction longAction) {
         this.longAction = longAction;
      }

      @Override
      public void propertyChange(PropertyChangeEvent evt) {
         if (evt.getNewValue() == SwingWorker.StateValue.DONE) {
            // if the worker is done, re-enable the Action and thus the JButton
            longAction.setEnabled(true);
            LongWorker worker = (LongWorker) evt.getSource();
            try {
               // call get to trap any exceptions that might have happened during worker's run
               worker.get();
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
            } catch (ExecutionException e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
            }
         }
      }
   }

   @SuppressWarnings("serial")
   public static class TimerAction extends AbstractAction {
      private static final int TIMER_DELAY = 3 * 1000;

      public TimerAction(String name) {
         super(name);
         int mnemonic = (int) name.charAt(0);
         putValue(MNEMONIC_KEY, mnemonic);
      }

      @Override
      public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
         setEnabled(false);
         new Timer(TIMER_DELAY, new TimerListener(this)).start();
      }
   }

   public static class TimerListener implements ActionListener {
      private TimerAction timerAction;

      public TimerListener(TimerAction timerAction) {
         this.timerAction = timerAction;
      }

      @Override
      public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
         timerAction.setEnabled(true);
         System.out.println("Finished Timer Action!");
         ((Timer) e.getSource()).stop();
      }
   }
}

thanks, I understand. Is there a reason why I should not simply use `addActionListener(event -> new Thread(() -> doLongAction()).start());` (custom Thread) on my `longAction` button instead of defining my own `SwingWorker`? (talking of LongWorker, not TimerAction) — phil294, Jul 23 '15 at 07:02
@Blauhirn: that would also work, but there are several advantages obtained by use of SwingWorker, including its publish/process method pair that makes it easy to pass data from the background thread to the GUI on the event thread, such as the SwingWorker progress property, making it easy to display in a JProgressBar the progress of the SwingWorker's work, and such as its easy use with a PropertyChangeListener, making it easy to be informed when the SwingWorker has completed its task. The SwingWorker also can return a value if desired when it has completed. — Hovercraft Full Of Eels, Jul 23 '15 at 15:04

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 22 '15 at 19:35

Don't use SwingUtilities.invokeLater(...) when you want to execute some long-running code. Do that in a separate normal thread.

Swing is not multi-threaded, it's event-driven. Because of that there are methods like SwingUtilities.invokeLater(...). You have to use those methods if you want to alter Swing-Components from a different thread (since Swing is not thread-safe), for example if you want to change a Button's text. Everything thats GUI-Related runs in that Swing-Thread, e.g. Cursor-Blinks, Messages from the OS, User Commands, etc. Since its a single thread, every long running Code in this thread it will block your GUI.

If you just do some long-running code that isn't GUI-related, it shouldn't run in the Swing-Event-Thread, but in its own separated thread.

See https://weblogs.java.net/blog/kgh/archive/2004/10/multithreaded_t.html for why Swing is not Multi-Threaded.

Why does SwingUtilities.invokeLater() cause JButton to freeze?

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