How to pause/resume all threads in an ExecutorService in Java?

Question

I submitted bunch of jobs to an executorservice in Java and I somehow want to temporarily pause all these jobs. What's the best way to do this? How can I resume? Or am I doing this completely wrong? Should I follow some other pattern for what I want to achieve (i.e. ability to pause/resume execution services)?

Answer 1

To answer my own question, I found an example of a PausableThreadPoolExecutor in the javadocs of ThreadPoolExecutor itself. Here is my version using Guava's Monitors:

import com.google.common.util.concurrent.Monitor;
import java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor;
import java.util.concurrent.ThreadFactory;

public class PausableExecutor extends ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor {

    private boolean isPaused;

    private final Monitor monitor = new Monitor();
    private final Monitor.Guard paused = new Monitor.Guard(monitor) {
        @Override
        public boolean isSatisfied() {
            return isPaused;
        }
    };

    private final Monitor.Guard notPaused = new Monitor.Guard(monitor) {
        @Override
        public boolean isSatisfied() {
            return !isPaused;
        }
    };

    public PausableExecutor(int corePoolSize, ThreadFactory threadFactory) {
        super(corePoolSize, threadFactory);
    }

    protected void beforeExecute(Thread t, Runnable r) {
        super.beforeExecute(t, r);
        monitor.enterWhenUninterruptibly(notPaused);
        try {
            monitor.waitForUninterruptibly(notPaused);
        } finally {
            monitor.leave();
        }
    }

    public void pause() {
        monitor.enterIf(notPaused);
        try {
            isPaused = true;
        } finally {
            monitor.leave();
        }
    }

    public void resume() {
        monitor.enterIf(paused);
        try {
            isPaused = false;
        } finally {
            monitor.leave();
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

I made some criticisms on your accepted answer, but they weren't very constructive... So here's my solution. I would use a class like this one and then call checkIn wherever/whenever I want pause functionality. Find it on GitHub!

import java.util.Date;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
import java.util.concurrent.locks.Condition;
import java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock;

/**
 * Provides a mechanism to pause multiple threads.
 * If wish your thread to participate, then it must regularly check in with an instance of this object.
 * 
 * @author Corin Lawson <corin@phiware.com.au>
 */
public class Continue {
    private boolean isPaused;
    private ReentrantLock pauseLock = new ReentrantLock();
    private Condition unpaused = pauseLock.newCondition();

    public void checkIn() throws InterruptedException {
        if (isPaused) {
            pauseLock.lock();
            try {
                while (isPaused)
                    unpaused.await();
            } finally {
                pauseLock.unlock();
            }
        }
    }

    public void checkInUntil(Date deadline) throws InterruptedException {
        if (isPaused) {
            pauseLock.lock();
            try {
                while (isPaused)
                    unpaused.awaitUntil(deadline);
            } finally {
                pauseLock.unlock();
            }
        }
    }

    public void checkIn(long nanosTimeout) throws InterruptedException {
        if (isPaused) {
            pauseLock.lock();
            try {
                while (isPaused)
                    unpaused.awaitNanos(nanosTimeout);
            } finally {
                pauseLock.unlock();
            }
        }
    }

    public void checkIn(long time, TimeUnit unit) throws InterruptedException {
        if (isPaused) {
            pauseLock.lock();
            try {
                while (isPaused)
                    unpaused.await(time, unit);
            } finally {
                pauseLock.unlock();
            }
        }
    }

    public void checkInUninterruptibly() {
        if (isPaused) {
            pauseLock.lock();
            try {
                while (isPaused)
                    unpaused.awaitUninterruptibly();
            } finally {
                pauseLock.unlock();
            }
        }
    }

    public boolean isPaused() {
        return isPaused;
    }

    public void pause() {
        pauseLock.lock();
        try {
            isPaused = true;
        } finally {
            pauseLock.unlock();
        }
    }

    public void resume() {
        pauseLock.lock();
        try {
            if (isPaused) {
                isPaused = false;
                unpaused.signalAll();
            }
        } finally {
            pauseLock.unlock();
        }
    }
}

For example:

import java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor;
import java.util.concurrent.ThreadFactory;

public class PausableExecutor extends ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor {
    private Continue cont;

    public PausableExecutor(int corePoolSize, ThreadFactory threadFactory, Continue c) {
        super(corePoolSize, threadFactory);
        cont = c;
    }

    protected void beforeExecute(Thread t, Runnable r) {
        cont.checkIn();
        super.beforeExecute(t, r);
    }
}

This has the added benefit that you can pause many threads with a single call to Continue's pause.

Answer 3

I was looking for pause/resume functionality in executor, but with additional ability to await for any currently being processed tasks. Below is variant of other great implementations from this SO with addition of await functions. I was testing it on executor with single thread. So basic usage is:

executor.pause();
executor.await(10000); // blocks till current tasks processing ends

class code:

import java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor;
import java.util.concurrent.locks.Condition;
import java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock;

public class PausableScheduledThreadPoolExecutor extends ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor {      
  public boolean isPaused;
  private ReentrantLock pauseLock = new ReentrantLock();
  private Condition unpaused = pauseLock.newCondition();
  private Latch activeTasksLatch = new Latch();

  private class Latch {
    private final Object synchObj = new Object();
    private int count;

    public boolean awaitZero(long waitMS) throws InterruptedException {
      long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
      synchronized (synchObj) {
        while (count > 0) {
          if ( waitMS != 0) {
            synchObj.wait(waitMS);
            long curTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
            if ( (curTime - startTime) > waitMS ) {                
              return count <= 0;
            }
          }
          else
            synchObj.wait();
        }
        return count <= 0; 
      }
    }
    public void countDown() {
      synchronized (synchObj) {
        if (--count <= 0) {
          // assert count >= 0;              
          synchObj.notifyAll();
        }
      }
    }
    public void countUp() {
      synchronized (synchObj) {
        count++;
      }
    }    
  }

  /**
   * Default constructor for a simple fixed threadpool
   */
  public PausableScheduledThreadPoolExecutor(int corePoolSize) {
    super(corePoolSize);
  }

  /**
   * Executed before a task is assigned to a thread.
   */
  @Override
  protected void beforeExecute(Thread t, Runnable r) {
    pauseLock.lock();
    try {
      while (isPaused)
        unpaused.await();
    } catch (InterruptedException ie) {
      t.interrupt();
    } finally {
      pauseLock.unlock();
    }

    activeTasksLatch.countUp();
    super.beforeExecute(t, r);
  }

  @Override
  protected void afterExecute(Runnable r, Throwable t) {
    try {
      super.afterExecute(r, t);
    }
    finally {
      activeTasksLatch.countDown();
    }
  }

  /**
   * Pause the threadpool. Running tasks will continue running, but new tasks
   * will not start untill the threadpool is resumed.
   */
  public void pause() {
    pauseLock.lock();
    try {
      isPaused = true;
    } finally {
      pauseLock.unlock();
    }
  }

  /**
   * Wait for all active tasks to end.
   */ 
  public boolean await(long timeoutMS) {
    // assert isPaused;
    try {
      return activeTasksLatch.awaitZero(timeoutMS);
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
      // log e, or rethrow maybe
    }
    return false;
  }

  /**
   * Resume the threadpool.
   */
  public void resume() {
    pauseLock.lock();
    try {
      isPaused = false;
      unpaused.signalAll();
    } finally {
      pauseLock.unlock();
    }
  }

}

Answer 4

The problem is that the Runnable/Callable themselves need to check when to pause/resume. That being said there and many ways to do this, and it depends on your requirements on how best to do this. Whatever your solution you need to make the waiting interruptable, so the thread can be shutdown cleanly.

Answer 5

I know this is old, but I tried all of these answers and none of them worked for what I was trying to do with a pausable timer; they all would throw out all of the data it would have been doing on a schedule as soon as it resumed (all at once).

Instead I found this Timer class on GitHub* here. This worked really well for me.

*I did not write this code, just found it.