Question

I have created a piece of code which takes an IP address (from main method in another class) and then loops through a range of IP addresses pinging each one as it goes. I have a GUI front end on this and it was crashing (hence why I’ve done the multithreading. My problem is I can no longer take the IP address as an argument in my ping code as its callable. I’ve searched all over for this and cant seem to find a way to get round this. Is there a way for a callable method to take arguments? If not is there any other way to accomplish what I’m trying to do?

sample of my code:

public class doPing implements Callable<String>{

public String call() throws Exception{

    String pingOutput = null;

    //gets IP address and places into new IP object
    InetAddress IPAddress = InetAddress.getByName(IPtoPing);
    //finds if IP is reachable or not. a timeout timer of 3000 milliseconds is set.
    //Results can vary depending on permissions so cmd method of doing this has also been added as backup
    boolean reachable = IPAddress.isReachable(1400);

    if (reachable){
          pingOutput = IPtoPing + " is reachable.\n";
    }else{
        //runs ping command once on the IP address in CMD
        Process ping = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("ping " + IPtoPing + " -n 1 -w 300");
        //reads input from command line
        BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(ping.getInputStream()));
        String line;
        int lineCount = 0;
        while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {
            //increase line count to find part of command prompt output that we want
            lineCount++;
            //when line count is 3 print result
            if (lineCount == 3){
                pingOutput = "Ping to " + IPtoPing + ": " + line + "\n";
            }
        }
    }
    return pingOutput;
}
}

IPtoPing used to be the argument that was taken.

Answer 1

You can’t pass it as the argument to call() because the method signature doesn’t allow it.

However, you can pass the necessary information as a constructor argument; e.g.

public class DoPing implements Callable<String>{
    private final String ipToPing;

    public DoPing(String ipToPing) {
        this.ipToPing = ipToPing;
    }

    public String call() throws SomeException {
        InetAddress ipAddress = InetAddress.getByName(ipToPing);
        ....
    }
}

(I’ve corrected a couple of egregious code style violations!!)

There are ways to eliminate some of the "boilerplate" coding in the above (see some of the other answers). In this case we are talking about 4 lines of code (in a ~40 line class), so I am not convinced that it is worth the effort. (But hey, it is your code.)

Alternatively, you could:

• declare DoPing as an inner class (or a lambda) and have it refer to a final ipToPing in the enclosing scope, or

• add a setIpToPing(String ipToPing) method.

(The last allows a DoPing object to be reused, but the downside is that you will need to synchronize to access it thread-safely.)