Question

I need to have a thread which checks for network connection availability on a JAVA desktop app. I got a thread like this

    class DataSyncThread extends Thread {
     DataSyncThread() {
     }

     public void run() {
         while(true){
            try{
                System.out.println("Checking for network");
                InetAddress addr = InetAddress.getByName(host);
                if(addr.isReachable(MIN_PRIORITY)){
                    syncData();
                }
                this.sleep(1000000);
            }catch(Exception e){}
         }
     }
 }

Now when I call this in the constructer the app never loads. when I look into the console (I trigger the jar to load from it) the thread work, it prints “Checking for network” in the console.

help appreciated

Answer 1

My guess is that you’re doing something like:

DataSyncThread thread = new DataSyncThread();
thread.run();

That will run the run() method synchronously. You should be calling start() to create a separate thread of execution:

DataSyncThread thread = new DataSyncThread();
thread.start();

I would also recommend implementing Runnable instead of extending Thread – or quite possibly using a Timer instead, given that you want periodic execution. I hope your real code has logging in your catch block, too…