Questions related to writing your own file downloader using multiple threads java
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Published on 2010-04-29T10:51:38Z
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Hello
In my current company, i am doing a PoC on how we can write a file downloader utility. We have
to use socket programming(TCP/IP) for downloading the files. One of the requirements of the
client is that a file(which will be large in size) should be transfered in chunks for example
if we have a file of 5Mb size then we can have 5 threads which transfer 1 Mb each. I have
written a small application which downloads a file. You can download the eclipe project
from http://www.fileflyer.com/view/QM1JSC0
A brief explanation of my classes
FileSender.java
This class provides the bytes of file. It has a method called
sendBytesOfFile(long start,long end, long sequenceNo) which gives the number of bytes.
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.zip.CRC32;
import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;
public class FileSender {
private static final String FILE_NAME = "C:\\shared\\test.pdf";
public ByteArrayWrapper sendBytesOfFile(long start,long end, long sequenceNo){
try {
File file = new File(FILE_NAME);
byte[] fileBytes = FileUtils.readFileToByteArray(file);
System.out.println("Size of file is " +fileBytes.length);
System.out.println();
System.out.println("Start "+start +" end "+end);
byte[] bytes = getByteArray(fileBytes, start, end);
ByteArrayWrapper wrapper = new ByteArrayWrapper(bytes, sequenceNo);
return wrapper;
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
}
private byte[] getByteArray(byte[] bytes, long start, long end){
long arrayLength = end-start;
System.out.println("Start : "+start +" end : "+end + " Arraylength : "+arrayLength +" length of source array : "+bytes.length);
byte[] arr = new byte[(int)arrayLength];
for(int i = (int)start, j =0; i < end;i++,j++){
arr[j] = bytes[i];
}
return arr;
}
public static long fileSize(){
File file = new File(FILE_NAME);
return file.length();
}
}
Second Class is FileReceiver.java - This class receives the file.
Small Explanation what this file does
- This class finds the size of the file to be fetched from Sender
- Depending upon the size of the file it finds the start and end position till the bytes needs to be read.
- It starts n number of threads giving each thread start,end, sequence number and a list which all the threads share.
- Each thread reads the number of bytes and creates a ByteArrayWrapper.
- ByteArrayWrapper objects are added to the list
- Then i have while loop which basically make sure that all threads have done their work
- finally it sorts the list based on the sequence number.
- then the bytes are joined, and a complete byte array is formed which is converted to a file.
Code of File Receiver
package com.filedownloader;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.Comparator;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.zip.CRC32;
import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;
public class FileReceiver {
public static void main(String[] args) {
FileReceiver receiver = new FileReceiver();
receiver.receiveFile();
}
public void receiveFile(){
long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
long numberOfThreads = 10;
long filesize = FileSender.fileSize();
System.out.println("File size received "+filesize);
long start = filesize/numberOfThreads;
List<ByteArrayWrapper> list = new ArrayList<ByteArrayWrapper>();
for(long threadCount =0; threadCount<numberOfThreads ;threadCount++){
FileDownloaderTask task = new FileDownloaderTask(threadCount*start,(threadCount+1)*start,threadCount,list);
new Thread(task).start();
}
while(list.size() != numberOfThreads){
// this is done so that all the threads should complete their work before processing further.
//System.out.println("Waiting for threads to complete. List size "+list.size());
}
if(list.size() == numberOfThreads){
System.out.println("All bytes received "+list);
Collections.sort(list, new Comparator<ByteArrayWrapper>() {
@Override
public int compare(ByteArrayWrapper o1, ByteArrayWrapper o2) {
long sequence1 = o1.getSequence();
long sequence2 = o2.getSequence();
if(sequence1 < sequence2){
return -1;
}else if(sequence1 > sequence2){
return 1;
}
else{
return 0;
}
}
});
byte[] totalBytes = list.get(0).getBytes();
byte[] firstArr = null;
byte[] secondArr = null;
for(int i = 1;i<list.size();i++){
firstArr = totalBytes;
secondArr = list.get(i).getBytes();
totalBytes = concat(firstArr, secondArr);
}
System.out.println(totalBytes.length);
convertToFile(totalBytes,"c:\\tmp\\test.pdf");
long endTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
System.out.println("Total time taken with "+numberOfThreads +" threads is "+(endTime-startTime)+" ms" );
}
}
private byte[] concat(byte[] A, byte[] B) {
byte[] C= new byte[A.length+B.length];
System.arraycopy(A, 0, C, 0, A.length);
System.arraycopy(B, 0, C, A.length, B.length);
return C;
}
private void convertToFile(byte[] totalBytes,String name) {
try {
FileUtils.writeByteArrayToFile(new File(name), totalBytes);
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
}
}
Code of ByteArrayWrapper
package com.filedownloader;
import java.io.Serializable;
public class ByteArrayWrapper implements Serializable{
private static final long serialVersionUID = 3499562855188457886L;
private byte[] bytes;
private long sequence;
public ByteArrayWrapper(byte[] bytes, long sequenceNo) {
this.bytes = bytes;
this.sequence = sequenceNo;
}
public byte[] getBytes() {
return bytes;
}
public long getSequence() {
return sequence;
}
}
Code of FileDownloaderTask
import java.util.List;
public class FileDownloaderTask implements Runnable {
private List<ByteArrayWrapper> list;
private long start;
private long end;
private long sequenceNo;
public FileDownloaderTask(long start,long end,long sequenceNo,List<ByteArrayWrapper> list) {
this.list = list;
this.start = start;
this.end = end;
this.sequenceNo = sequenceNo;
}
@Override
public void run() {
ByteArrayWrapper wrapper = new FileSender().sendBytesOfFile(start, end, sequenceNo);
list.add(wrapper);
}
}
Questions related to this code
1) Does file downloading becomes fast when multiple threads is used? In this code i am not able to see the benefit.
2) How should i decide how many threads should i create ?
3) Are their any opensource libraries which does that
4) The file which file receiver receives is valid and not corrupted but checksum (i used FileUtils of common-io) does not match. Whats the problem?
5) This code gives out of memory when used with large file(above 100 Mb) i.e. because byte array which is created. How can i avoid?
I know this is a very bad code but i have to write this in one day -:). Please suggest any
other good way to do this?
Thanks
Shekhar
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