Question

I am really unfamiliar with working with threads, so I was hoping someone could help me figure out the best way to do this.

I have a JButton in my java application…when you click on the button, I have a Process Builder that creates a process which executes some external python code. The python code generates some files, and this can take some time. When the python code is done executing, I need to load those files into an applet within my Java application.

In its current form, I have a p.waitFor() within the code that calls the external python file…so when you click on the button, the button hangs (the entire application hangs actually) until the process is done. Obviously, I want the user to be able to interact with the rest of the application while this process is going on, but as soon as it’s done, I want my application to know about it, so that it can load the files into the applet.

What is the best way to do this?

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

You should use SwingWorker to invoke the Python process on a background thread. This way your UI will remain responsive whilst the long-running task runs.

// Define Action.
Action action = new AbstractAction("Do It") {
  public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
    runBackgroundTask();
  }
}

// Install Action into JButton.
JButton btn = new JButton(action);

private void runBackgroundTask() {
  new SwingWorker<Void, Void>() {
    {
      // Disable action until task is complete to prevent concurrent tasks.
      action.setEnabled(false);
    }

    // Called on the Swing thread when background task completes.
    protected void done() {
      action.setEnabled(true);

      try {
        // No result but calling get() will propagate any exceptions onto Swing thread.
        get();
      } catch(Exception ex) {
        // Handle exception
      }
    }

    // Called on background thread
    protected Void doInBackground() throws Exception {
      // Add ProcessBuilder code here!
      return null; // No result so simply return null.
    }
  }.execute();
}