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Unit 39: Asynchronous Programming

After this unit, students should:

  • understand the limitation of thread
  • understand and be able to use CompletableFuture

Limitations of Thread

Writing code directly with the Thread class gives us control on how many threads to create, what they do, how they communicate with each other, and some level of control on which thread gets executed when. While Java's Thread is already a higher-level abstraction compared to, say, the pthread library in C and C++, it still takes a fair amount of effort to write complex multi-threaded programs in Java.

Consider the situation where we have a series of tasks that we wish to execute concurrently and we want to organize them such that:

  • Task A must start first.
  • When Task A is done, we take the result from Task A, and pass it to Tasks B, C, and D.
  • We want Task B and C to complete before we pass their results to Task E.

We also want to handle exceptions gracefully -- if one of the tasks encounters an exception, the other tasks not dependent on it should still be completed.

Implementing the above using Thread requires careful coordination. Firstly, there are no methods in Thread that return a value. We need the threads to communicate through shared variables. Secondly, there is no mechanism to specify the execution order and dependencies among them -- which thread to start after another thread completes. Finally, we have to consider the possibility of exceptions in each of our tasks.

Another drawback of using Thread is its overhead -- the creation of Thread instances takes up some resources in Java. As much as possible, we should reuse our Thread instances to run multiple tasks. For instance, the same Thread instance could have run Tasks A, B, and E in the example above. Managing the Thread instances itself and deciding which Thread instance should run which Thread is a gigantic undertaking.

A Higher-Level Abstraction

What we need is a higher-level abstraction that allows programmers to focus on specifying the tasks and their dependencies, without worrying about the details. Suppose we want to run the tasks in a single thread, we could do the following:

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int foo(int x) {
  int a = taskA(x);
  int b = taskB(a);
  int c = taskC(a);
  int d = taskD(a);
  int e = taskE(b, c)
  return e;
}

We could also use monads to chain up the computations. Let's say that one of the tasks might not produce a value, then we can use the Maybe<T> monad:

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Maybe<Integer> foo(int x) {
  Maybe<Integer> a = Maybe.of(taskA(x));
  Maybe<Integer> b = a.flatMap(i -> taskB(i));
  Maybe<Integer> c = a.flatMap(i -> taskC(i));
  Maybe<Integer> d = a.flatMap(i -> taskD(i));
  Maybe<Integer> e = b.combine(c, (i, j) -> taskE(i, j));
  return e;
}

If we want to perform the tasks lazily, then we can use the Lazy<T> monad:

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Lazy<Integer> foo(int x) {
  Lazy<Integer> a = Lazy.of(taskA(x));
  Lazy<Integer> b = a.flatMap(i -> taskB(i));
  Lazy<Integer> c = a.flatMap(i -> taskC(i));
  Lazy<Integer> d = a.flatMap(i -> taskD(i));
  Lazy<Integer> e = b.combine(c, (i, j) -> taskE(i, j));
  return e;
}

Wouldn't it be nice if there is a monad that allows us to perform the tasks concurrently? java.util.concurrent.CompletableFuture does just that! Here is an example of how to use it:

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CompletableFuture<Integer> foo(int x) {
  CompletableFuture<Integer> a = CompletableFuture.completedFuture(taskA(x));
  CompletableFuture<Integer> b = a.thenComposeAsync(i -> taskB(i));
  CompletableFuture<Integer> c = a.thenComposeAsync(i -> taskC(i));
  CompletableFuture<Integer> d = a.thenComposeAsync(i -> taskD(i));
  CompletableFuture<Integer> e = b.thenCombineAsync(c, (i, j) -> taskE(i, j));
  return e;
}

We can then run foo(x).get() to wait for all the concurrent tasks to complete and return us the value. CompletableFuture<T> is a monad that encapsulates a value that is either there or not there yet. Such an abstraction is also known as a promise in other languages (e.g., Promise in JavaScript and std::promise in C++) -- it encapsulates the promise to produce a value.

The CompletableFuture Monad

Let's now examine the CompletableFuture monad in more detail. A key property of CompletableFuture is whether the value it promises is ready -- i.e., the tasks that it encapsulates has completed or not.

Creating a CompletableFuture

There are several ways we can create a CompletableFuture<T> instance:

  • Use the completedFuture method. This method is equivalent to creating a task that is already completed and return us a value.
  • Use the runAsync method that takes in a Runnable lambda expression. runAsync has the return type of CompletableFuture<Void>. The returned CompletableFuture instance completes when the given lambda expression finishes.
  • Use the supplyAsync method that takes in a Supplier<T> lambda expression. supplyAsync has the return type of CompletableFuture<T>. The returned CompletableFuture instance completes when the given lambda expression finishes.

We can also create a CompletableFuture that relies on other CompletableFuture instances. We can use allOf or anyOf methods for this. Both of these methods take in a variable number of other CompletableFuture instances. A new CompletableFuture created with allOf is completed only when all the given CompletableFuture completes. On the other hand, a new CompletableFuture created with anyOf is completed when any one of the given CompletableFuture completes.

Chaining CompletableFuture

The usefulness of CompletableFuture comes from the ability to chain them up and specify a sequence of computations to be run. We have the following methods:

  • thenApply, which is analogous to map
  • thenCompose, which is analogous to flatMap
  • thenCombine, which is analogous to combine

The methods above run the given lambda expression in the same thread as the caller. There is also an asynchronous version (thenApplyAsync, thenComposeAsync, thenCombineAsync), which may cause the given lambda expression to run in a different thread (thus more concurrency).

CompletableFuture also has several methods that takes in Runnable. These methods have no analogy in our lab but it is similar to runAsync above.

  • thenRun takes in a Runnable. It executes the Runnable after the current stage is completed.
  • runAfterBoth takes in another CompletableFuture1 and a Runnable. It executes the Runnable after the current stage completes and the input CompletableFuture are completed.
  • runAfterEither takes in another CompletableFuture1 and a Runnable. It executes the Runnable after the current stage completes or the input CompletableFuture are completed.

All of the methods that takes in Runnable return CompletableFuture<Void>. Similarly, they also have the asynchronous version (thenRunAsync, runAfterBothAsync, runAfterEitherAsync).

Getting The Result

After we have set up all the tasks to run asynchronously, we have to wait for them to complete. We can call get() to get the result. Since get() is a synchronous call, i.e., it blocks until the CompletableFuture completes, to maximize concurrency, we should only call get() as the final step in our code.

The method CompletableFuture::get throws a couple of checked exceptions: InterruptedException and ExecutionException, which we need to catch and handle. The former refers to the exception that the thread has been interrupted, while the latter refers to errors/exceptions during execution.

An alternative to get() is join(). join() behaves just like get() except that no checked exception is thrown.

Example

Let's look at some examples. Let's reuse our method that computes the i-th prime number.

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int findIthPrime(int i) {
  return Stream
          .iterate(2, x -> x + 1)
          .filter(x -> isPrime(x))
          .limit(i)
          .reduce((x, y) -> y)
          .orElse(0);
}

Given two numbers i and j, we want to find the difference between the i-th prime number and the j-th prime number. We can first do the following:

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CompletableFuture<Integer> ith = CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(() -> findIthPrime(i));
CompletableFuture<Integer> jth = CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(() -> findIthPrime(j));

These calls would launch two concurrent threads to compute the i-th and the j-th primes. The method calls supplyAsync returns immediately without waiting for findIthPrime to complete.

Next, we can say, that, when ith and jth complete, take the value computed by them, and take the difference. We can use the thenCombine method: 

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CompletableFuture<Integer> diff = ith.thenCombine(jth, (x, y) -> x - y);

This statement creates another CompletableFuture which runs asynchronously that will compute the difference between the two prime numbers. At this point, we can move on to run other tasks, or if we just want to wait until the result is ready, we call 

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diff.join();

to get the difference between the two primes2.

Handling Exceptions

One of the advantages of using CompletableFuture<T> instead of Thread to handle concurrency is its ability to handle exceptions. CompletableFuture<T> has three methods that deal with exceptions: exceptionally, whenComplete, and handle. We will focus on handle since it is the most general.

Suppose we have a computation inside a CompletableFuture<T> that might throw an exception. Since the computation is asynchronous and could run in a different thread, the question of which thread should catch and handle the exception arises. CompletableFuture<T> keeps things simpler by storing the exception and passing it down the chain of calls, until join() is called. join() might throw CompletionException and whoever calls join() will be responsible for handling this exception. The CompletionException contains information on the original exception.

For instance, the code below would throw a CompletionException with a NullPointerException contains within it.

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CompletableFuture.<Integer>supplyAsync(() -> null)
                 .thenApply(x -> x + 1)
                 .join();

Suppose we want to continue chaining our tasks despite exceptions. We can use the handle method, to handle the exception. The handle method takes in a BiFunction (similar to cs2030s.fp.Combiner). The first parameter to the BiFunction is the value, the second is the exception, the third is the return value.

Only one of the first two parameters is not null. If the value is null, this means that an exception has been thrown. Otherwise, the exception is null3.

Here is a simple example where we use handle to replace a default value. 

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cf.thenApply(x -> x + 1)
  .handle((t, e) -> (e == null) ? t : 0)
  .join();

  1. Actually, this is a CompletionStage which is a supertype of CompletableFuture. ↩↩

  2. There is repeated computation in primality checks between the two calls to findIthPrime here, which one could optimize. We don't do that here to keep the example simple. ↩

  3. This is another instance where Java uses null to indicates a missing value. We can't use null as a legit value due to this flawed design. ↩