Implementing Threads in Java

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Before we get into thread implementation in Java, let us spend some time and understand the idea and concepts behind threads and concurrent programming.

What is Concurrency

Applications are expected to do more than one task at the same time in parallel. Applications which do more than one tasks at a time are called concurrent applications. An example of such concurrent software application is streaming audio application. It must read the digital audio from the network, decompress, manage playback and update the audio simultaneously.

Process and Thread

There are two basic units in the concurrent programming namely Process and Thread. In Java, the concurrent programming is implemented using Threads. Each operating system consists of many processes running to achieve different tasks. Each process has its own memory space. As a matter of fact, JVM (Java Virtual Machine) runs as a single process. A Process contains one more Threads. Each and every Thread which belongs to a Process can share Process’s resources, memory and files.

Implementing Threads

Now, we have a good understanding of what is a process and thread. In Java, each thread is an instance of a class Thread. There are two ways to create a thread. The following two sections discuss about these two ways to create and start threads:

By Implementing Runnable Interface

The ‘Runnable’ interface contains a single method called ‘run()’ which contains the code to be executed in the thread. Once the thread instance is created and ‘start()’ method is called on the thread, JVM creates a thread and invokes ‘run()’ method.


public class MyRunnable implements Runnable {
public void run() {
System.out.println(“My first thread is running…”);
}
public static void main(String… args) {
new Thread(new MyRunnable()).start();
}
}

The above snippet of code creates a thread class by implementing ‘Runnable’ interface and by providing implementation for method ‘run()’. The ‘run()’ method will contain the execution logic for the thread to execute. After that, in the main() method we created an instance of the class which implements Runnable interface, and passed that instance to the new Thread object. Finally, we called ‘start()’ to start the thread execution.

Why calling start() method invokes run() method

In order to spawn a new thread, we need to call ‘start()’ method. Calling ‘run()’ method directly will execute current thread’s ‘run()’ method. So for this reason we need to call ‘start()’ method. Once the ‘start()’ method is called, JVM creates a new thread instance and executes newly created thread’s ‘run()’ method. Before calling ‘start()’ method on a Thread instance, the thread will be in new state. This means that, we only have a Thread object not running thread. Once we call ‘start()’ method on the thread instance, the following actions happen:

  • New thread of execution starts
  • Thread moves from new state to runnable state
  • Thread’s ‘run()’ method will be executed

In fact, every Java program runs in a thread, we can call it the ‘main’ thread. In the above code example, we instantiated and started a thread from our main thread.

By Extending Thread Class

We can also create threads by extending Thread class and by overriding ‘run()’ method. This is because the Thread class itself implements Runnable interface. The following code sample shows how to create and start a thread by extending Thread class.


public class MyThread extends Thread {
public void run() {
System.out.println(“My new thread from Thread class”);
}
public static void main(String… args) {
new MyThread().start();
}
}

As we see the previous code example, we straightaway created our thread instance and started the thread by calling its ‘start()’ method.

Implementing Runnable vs. Extending Thread Class

As we already discussed we have two ways to create and start threads in Java. The following two points summarizes these two strategies and discusses which approach is most benefited.

  • Thread creation by implementing Runnable interface abstracts thread management from the rest of our application. Once we have a thread instance we simply pass it to the executor which actually executes the thread.
  • Thread creation by extending Thread class is probably simple to code. This way we can directly control and manage the thread creation. However, this approach has a drawback that, once a class extends Thread class, it cannot extend any other class. As we already know, Java allows only one class to extend as parent class.

So the recommended way to create threads is by implementing Runnable interface. But, extending Thread class also fine provided that application requirements demands that. In terms of functionality and thread execution, there will not be any difference with respect to the above two approaches.

About Aditi Malhotra

Aditi Malhotra is the Content Marketing Manager at Whizlabs. Having a Master in Journalism and Mass Communication, she helps businesses stop playing around with Content Marketing and start seeing tangible ROI. A writer by day and a reader by night, she is a fine blend of both reality and fantasy. Apart from her professional commitments, she is also endearing to publish a book authored by her very soon.

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