Stopping Thread

Question

I have an application having a thread which runs continously,writing to a file.And it should terminate on a button click.But this results in flooding of Exceptions which forces the application to terminate.I tried using stop() function,but that doesn't work.Can any one suggest a method(code if possible) to safely terminate the thread and close the file.

The safest way is always having the threat terminate itself. I think it maybe a better idea to look into what is causing the exception. Would you mind pasting in the stack trace? — ming_codes, Jul 18 '11 at 21:10

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 18 '11 at 21:13

Threading in Java is cooperative: you can not stop a thread from outside, you can only signal it to stop an then thread stops itself (i.e. exits the run method).

To signal it to stop, just have a boolean field running=true which thread checks in it's main loop. When running==false thread exits the run() method.

In your particular case it could be a bit trickier depending how you read data to be written to file. Do you use any blocking read calls to read the data?

Simple and effective...that did the trick...thks Peter...u saved my day!! — Anva316, Jul 18 '11 at 21:20

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 18 '11 at 21:15

For the thread:

public void run() {
    while (running) {
        // write each line to file here
    {
    // close file
}

For the button's onClick() add:

running=false;
myThread.join(); // enclose in try/catch and while loop appropriately to ensure the thread ends

Stopping Thread

2 Answers2