An Executor that provides methods to manage termination and methods that can produce a Future for tracking progress of one or more asynchronous tasks.

An ExecutorService can be shut down, which will cause it to stop accepting new tasks. After being shut down, the executor will eventually terminate, at which point no tasks are actively executing, no tasks are awaiting execution, and no new tasks can be submitted.

Method submit extends base method Executor#execute by creating and returning a Future that can be used to cancel execution and/or wait for completion. Methods invokeAny and invokeAll perform the most commonly useful forms of bulk execution, executing a collection of tasks and then waiting for at least one, or all, to complete. (Class ExecutorCompletionService can be used to write customized variants of these methods.)

The Executors class provides factory methods for the executor services provided in this package.

Usage Example

Here is a sketch of a network service in which threads in a thread pool service incoming requests. It uses the preconfigured Executors#newFixedThreadPool factory method:
 class NetworkService {
    private final ServerSocket serverSocket;
    private final ExecutorService pool;

    public NetworkService(int port, int poolSize) throws IOException {
      serverSocket = new ServerSocket(port);
      pool = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(poolSize);
    }
 
    public void serve() {
      try {
        for (;;) {
          pool.execute(new Handler(serverSocket.accept()));
        }
      } catch (IOException ex) {
        pool.shutdown();
      }
    }
  }

  class Handler implements Runnable {
    private final Socket socket;
    Handler(Socket socket) { this.socket = socket; }
    public void run() {
      // read and service request
    }
 }
 
@since
1.5
@author
Doug Lea
Blocks until all tasks have completed execution after a shutdown request, or the timeout occurs, or the current thread is interrupted, whichever happens first.
Parameters
timeoutthe maximum time to wait
unitthe time unit of the timeout argument
Return
true if this executor terminated and false if the timeout elapsed before termination
Throws
InterruptedExceptionif interrupted while waiting
Executes the given command at some time in the future. The command may execute in a new thread, in a pooled thread, or in the calling thread, at the discretion of the Executor implementation.
Parameters
commandthe runnable task
Throws
RejectedExecutionExceptionif this task cannot be accepted for execution.
NullPointerExceptionif command is null
Executes the given tasks, returning a list of Futures holding their status and results when all complete. Future#isDone is true for each element of the returned list. Note that a completed task could have terminated either normally or by throwing an exception. The results of this method are undefined if the given collection is modified while this operation is in progress.
Parameters
tasksthe collection of tasks
Return
A list of Futures representing the tasks, in the same sequential order as produced by the iterator for the given task list, each of which has completed.
Throws
InterruptedExceptionif interrupted while waiting, in which case unfinished tasks are cancelled.
NullPointerExceptionif tasks or any of its elements are null
RejectedExecutionExceptionif any task cannot be scheduled for execution
Executes the given tasks, returning a list of Futures holding their status and results when all complete or the timeout expires, whichever happens first. Future#isDone is true for each element of the returned list. Upon return, tasks that have not completed are cancelled. Note that a completed task could have terminated either normally or by throwing an exception. The results of this method are undefined if the given collection is modified while this operation is in progress.
Parameters
tasksthe collection of tasks
timeoutthe maximum time to wait
unitthe time unit of the timeout argument
Return
A list of Futures representing the tasks, in the same sequential order as produced by the iterator for the given task list. If the operation did not time out, each task will have completed. If it did time out, some of these tasks will not have completed.
Throws
InterruptedExceptionif interrupted while waiting, in which case unfinished tasks are cancelled.
NullPointerExceptionif tasks, any of its elements, or unit are null
RejectedExecutionExceptionif any task cannot be scheduled for execution
Executes the given tasks, returning the result of one that has completed successfully (i.e., without throwing an exception), if any do. Upon normal or exceptional return, tasks that have not completed are cancelled. The results of this method are undefined if the given collection is modified while this operation is in progress.
Parameters
tasksthe collection of tasks
Return
The result returned by one of the tasks.
Throws
InterruptedExceptionif interrupted while waiting
NullPointerExceptionif tasks or any of its elements are null
IllegalArgumentExceptionif tasks empty
ExecutionExceptionif no task successfully completes
RejectedExecutionExceptionif tasks cannot be scheduled for execution
Executes the given tasks, returning the result of one that has completed successfully (i.e., without throwing an exception), if any do before the given timeout elapses. Upon normal or exceptional return, tasks that have not completed are cancelled. The results of this method are undefined if the given collection is modified while this operation is in progress.
Parameters
tasksthe collection of tasks
timeoutthe maximum time to wait
unitthe time unit of the timeout argument
Return
The result returned by one of the tasks.
Throws
InterruptedExceptionif interrupted while waiting
NullPointerExceptionif tasks, any of its elements, or unit are null
TimeoutExceptionif the given timeout elapses before any task successfully completes
ExecutionExceptionif no task successfully completes
RejectedExecutionExceptionif tasks cannot be scheduled for execution
Returns true if this executor has been shut down.
Return
true if this executor has been shut down
Returns true if all tasks have completed following shut down. Note that isTerminated is never true unless either shutdown or shutdownNow was called first.
Return
true if all tasks have completed following shut down
Initiates an orderly shutdown in which previously submitted tasks are executed, but no new tasks will be accepted. Invocation has no additional effect if already shut down.
Throws
SecurityExceptionif a security manager exists and shutting down this ExecutorService may manipulate threads that the caller is not permitted to modify because it does not hold {@link java.lang.RuntimePermission}("modifyThread"), or the security manager's checkAccess method denies access.
Attempts to stop all actively executing tasks, halts the processing of waiting tasks, and returns a list of the tasks that were awaiting execution.

There are no guarantees beyond best-effort attempts to stop processing actively executing tasks. For example, typical implementations will cancel via Thread#interrupt , so if any tasks mask or fail to respond to interrupts, they may never terminate.

Return
list of tasks that never commenced execution
Throws
SecurityExceptionif a security manager exists and shutting down this ExecutorService may manipulate threads that the caller is not permitted to modify because it does not hold {@link java.lang.RuntimePermission}("modifyThread"), or the security manager's checkAccess method denies access.
Submits a value-returning task for execution and returns a Future representing the pending results of the task.

If you would like to immediately block waiting for a task, you can use constructions of the form result = exec.submit(aCallable).get();

Note: The Executors class includes a set of methods that can convert some other common closure-like objects, for example, java.security.PrivilegedAction to Callable form so they can be submitted.

Parameters
taskthe task to submit
Return
a Future representing pending completion of the task
Throws
RejectedExecutionExceptionif task cannot be scheduled for execution
NullPointerExceptionif task null
Submits a Runnable task for execution and returns a Future representing that task.
Parameters
taskthe task to submit
Return
a Future representing pending completion of the task, and whose get() method will return null upon completion.
Throws
RejectedExecutionExceptionif task cannot be scheduled for execution
NullPointerExceptionif task null
Submits a Runnable task for execution and returns a Future representing that task that will upon completion return the given result
Parameters
taskthe task to submit
resultthe result to return
Return
a Future representing pending completion of the task, and whose get() method will return the given result upon completion.
Throws
RejectedExecutionExceptionif task cannot be scheduled for execution
NullPointerExceptionif task null