Question

In the java docs of the map interface’s entrySet() method I found this statement and I really do no understand it.

The set is backed by the map, so changes to the map are reflected in the set, and vice-versa. If the map is modified while an iteration over the set is in progress, the results of the iteration are undefined

what is meant by undefined here?

For more clarification, this is my situation.

I have a web application based on spring & hibernate.

Our team implemented custom caching class called CachedIntegrationClients.

We are using RabbitMQ as a messaging server.

instead of getting our clients each time we want to send a message to the server, we cache the clients using the previous caching class.

The problem is that the messages are sent to the messaging server twice.

Viewing the logs, we found that the method that get the cached clients return the client twice, although this (theoretically) impossible as we store the clients in a map, and the map does not allow duplicate keys.

After some smoke viewing of the code I found that the method that iterates over the cached clients gets a set of the clients from the cached clients map.

So I suspected that while iterating over this set, another request is made by another client and this client may be uncached, so it modifies the map.

Any way this is the CachedIntegrationClients class

public class CachedIntegrationClientServiceImpl {
private IntegrationDao integrationDao;
private IntegrationService integrationService;

Map<String, IntegrationClient> cachedIntegrationClients = null;

@Override
public void setBaseDAO(BaseDao baseDao) {
    super.setBaseDAO(integrationDao);
}

@Override
public void refreshCache() {
    cachedIntegrationClients = null;
}

synchronized private void putOneIntegrationClientOnCache(IntegrationClient integrationClient){
    fillCachedIntegrationClients(); // only fill cache if it is null , it will never refill cache
    if (! cachedIntegrationClients.containsValue(integrationClient)) {
        cachedIntegrationClients.put(integrationClient.getClientSlug(),integrationClient);
    }
}

/**
 * only fill cache if it is null , it will never refill cache
 */
private void fillCachedIntegrationClients() {
    if (cachedIntegrationClients != null) {
        return ;
    }
    log.debug("filling cache of cachedClients");
    cachedIntegrationClients = new HashMap<String, IntegrationClient>(); // initialize cache Map
    List<IntegrationClient> allCachedIntegrationClients= integrationDao.getAllIntegrationClients();
    if (allCachedIntegrationClients != null) {
        for (IntegrationClient integrationClient : allCachedIntegrationClients) {
            integrationService
                    .injectCssFileForIntegrationClient(integrationClient);
            fetchClientServiceRelations(integrationClient
                    .getIntegrationClientServiceList());
        }
        for (IntegrationClient integrationClient : allCachedIntegrationClients) {
            putOneIntegrationClientOnCache(integrationClient);
        }
    }
}

/**
 * fetch all client service
 * @param integrationClientServiceList
 */
private void fetchClientServiceRelations(
        List<IntegrationClientService> integrationClientServiceList) {
    for (IntegrationClientService integrationClientService : integrationClientServiceList) {
        fetchClientServiceRelations(integrationClientService);
    }
}

private void fetchClientServiceRelations(IntegrationClientService clientService) {
    for (Exchange exchange : clientService.getExchangeList()) {
        exchange.getId();
    }
    for (Company company : clientService.getCompanyList()) {
        company.getId();
    }

}
/**
 * Get a client given its slug.
 * 
 * If the client was not found, an exception will be thrown.
 * 
 * @throws ClientNotFoundIntegrationException
 * @return IntegrationClient
 */
@Override
public IntegrationClient getIntegrationClient(String clientSlug) throws ClientNotFoundIntegrationException {
    if (cachedIntegrationClients == null) {
        fillCachedIntegrationClients();
    }

    if (!cachedIntegrationClients.containsKey(clientSlug)) {
        IntegrationClient integrationClient = integrationDao.getIntegrationClient(clientSlug);
        if (integrationClient != null) {
            this.fetchClientServiceRelations(integrationClient.getIntegrationClientServiceList());
            integrationService.injectCssFileForIntegrationClient(integrationClient);
            cachedIntegrationClients.put(clientSlug, integrationClient);
        }
    }

    IntegrationClient client = cachedIntegrationClients.get(clientSlug);
    if (client == null) {
        throw ClientNotFoundIntegrationException.forClientSlug(clientSlug);
    }
    return client;
}

public void setIntegrationDao(IntegrationDao integrationDao) {
    this.integrationDao = integrationDao;
}

public IntegrationDao getIntegrationDao() {
    return integrationDao;
}

public Map<String, IntegrationClient> getCachedIntegrationClients() {
    if (cachedIntegrationClients == null) {
        fillCachedIntegrationClients();
    }
    return cachedIntegrationClients;
}

public IntegrationService getIntegrationService() {
    return integrationService;
}

public void setIntegrationService(IntegrationService integrationService) {
    this.integrationService = integrationService;
}

}

and here is the method that iterates over the set

public List<IntegrationClientService> getIntegrationClientServicesForService(IntegrationServiceModel service) {
        List<IntegrationClientService> integrationClientServices = new ArrayList<IntegrationClientService>();
        for (Entry<String, IntegrationClient> entry : cachedIntegrationClientService.getCachedIntegrationClients().entrySet()) {
            IntegrationClientService integrationClientService = getIntegrationClientService(entry.getValue(), service);
            if (integrationClientService != null) {
                integrationClientServices.add(integrationClientService);
            }
        }
        return integrationClientServices;
    }

Also here is the method that calls the previous one

List<IntegrationClientService> clients = integrationService.getIntegrationClientServicesForService(service);
    System.out.println(clients.size());
    if (clients.size() > 0) {
        log.info("Inbound service message [" + messageType.getKey() + "] to be sent to " + clients.size()
                + " registered clients: [" + StringUtils.arrayToDelimitedString(clients.toArray(), ", ") + "]");

        for (IntegrationClientService integrationClientService : clients) {
            Message<T> message = integrationMessageBuilder.build(messageType, payload, integrationClientService);
            try {
                channel.send(message);
            } catch (RuntimeException e) {
                messagingIntegrationService.handleException(e, messageType, integrationClientService, payload);
            }
        }
    } else {
        log.info("Inbound service message [" + messageType.getKey() + "] but no registered clients, not taking any further action.");
    }

and here is the logs that appears on the server

BaseIntegrationGateway.createAndSendToSubscribers(65) | Inbound service message [news.create] to be sent to 3 registered clients: [Id=126, Service=IntegrationService.MESSAGE_NEWS, Client=MDC, Id=125, Service=IntegrationService.MESSAGE_NEWS, Client=CNBC, Id=125, Service=IntegrationService.MESSAGE_NEWS, Client=CNBC]

Answer 1

Have you looked at java.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap?

EDIT: I looked over your code again this stikes me as odd:

In fillCachedIntegrationClients() you have the following loop:

for (IntegrationClient integrationClient : allCachedIntegrationClients) {
        putOneIntegrationClientOnCache(integrationClient);
    }

But the putOneIntegrationClientOnCache method itself directly calls fillCachedIntegrationClients();

synchronized private void putOneIntegrationClientOnCache(IntegrationClient integrationClient){
fillCachedIntegrationClients(); // only fill cache if it is null , it will never refill cache
...

}

Something there must go wrong. You are calling fillCachedIntegrationClients() twice. Actually if I am not mistaken this should actually be a never-ending loop since one method calls the other and vice versa. The != null condition is never met during the initialization. Ofcourse you are modifying and iterating in a undefined way so maybe that saves you from an infinite loop.