Handling file upload in a non-blocking manner
- by Kaliyug Antagonist
The background thread is here
Just to make objective clear - the user will upload a large file and must be redirected immediately to another page for proceeding different operations. But the file being large, will take time to be read from the controller's InputStream. So I unwillingly decided to fork a new Thread to handle this I/O. The code is as follows :
The controller servlet
/**
     * @see HttpServlet#doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse
     *      response)
     */
    protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,
            HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        System.out.println("In Controller.doPost(...)");
        TempModel tempModel = new TempModel();
        tempModel.uploadSegYFile(request, response);
        System.out.println("Forwarding to Accepted.jsp");
        /*try {
            Thread.sleep(1000 * 60);
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }*/
        request.getRequestDispatcher("/jsp/Accepted.jsp").forward(request,
                response);
    }
The model class
package com.model;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException;
import java.util.concurrent.Future;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import com.utils.ProcessUtils;
public class TempModel {
    public void uploadSegYFile(HttpServletRequest request,
            HttpServletResponse response) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        System.out.println("In TempModel.uploadSegYFile(...)");
        /*
         * Trigger the upload/processing code in a thread, return immediately
         * and notify when the thread completes
         */
        try {
            FileUploaderRunnable fileUploadRunnable = new FileUploaderRunnable(
                    request.getInputStream());
            /*
             * Future<FileUploaderRunnable> future = ProcessUtils.submitTask(
             * fileUploadRunnable, fileUploadRunnable);
             * 
             * FileUploaderRunnable processed = future.get();
             * 
             * System.out.println("Is file uploaded : " +
             * processed.isFileUploaded());
             */
            Thread uploadThread = new Thread(fileUploadRunnable);
            uploadThread.start();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        } /*
         * catch (InterruptedException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block
         * e.printStackTrace(); } catch (ExecutionException e) { // TODO
         * Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); }
         */
        System.out.println("Returning from TempModel.uploadSegYFile(...)");
    }
}
The Runnable 
package com.model;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
import java.nio.channels.Channels;
import java.nio.channels.ReadableByteChannel;
public class FileUploaderRunnable implements Runnable {
    private boolean isFileUploaded = false;
    private InputStream inputStream = null;
    public FileUploaderRunnable(InputStream inputStream) {
        // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub
        this.inputStream = inputStream;
    }
    public void run() {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        /* Read from InputStream. If success, set isFileUploaded = true */
        System.out.println("Starting upload in a thread");
        File outputFile = new File("D:/06c01_output.seg");/*
                                                         * This will be changed
                                                         * later
                                                         */
        FileOutputStream fos;
        ReadableByteChannel readable = Channels.newChannel(inputStream);
        ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(1000000);
        try {
            fos = new FileOutputStream(outputFile);
            while (readable.read(buffer) != -1) {
                fos.write(buffer.array());
                buffer.clear();
            }
            fos.flush();
            fos.close();
            readable.close();
        } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            // TODO Auto-generated catch block
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        System.out.println("File upload thread completed");
    }
    public boolean isFileUploaded() {
        return isFileUploaded;
    }
}
My queries/doubts : 
Spawning threads manually from the Servlet makes sense to me logically but scares me coding wise - the container isn't aware of these threads after all(I think so!)
The current code is giving an Exception which is quite obvious - the stream is inaccessible as the doPost(...) method returns before the run() method completes :
In Controller.doPost(...)
In TempModel.uploadSegYFile(...)
Returning from TempModel.uploadSegYFile(...)
Forwarding to Accepted.jsp
Starting upload in a thread
Exception in thread "Thread-4" java.lang.NullPointerException
    at org.apache.coyote.http11.InternalInputBuffer.fill(InternalInputBuffer.java:512)
    at org.apache.coyote.http11.InternalInputBuffer.fill(InternalInputBuffer.java:497)
    at org.apache.coyote.http11.InternalInputBuffer$InputStreamInputBuffer.doRead(InternalInputBuffer.java:559)
    at org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractInputBuffer.doRead(AbstractInputBuffer.java:324)
    at org.apache.coyote.Request.doRead(Request.java:422)
    at org.apache.catalina.connector.InputBuffer.realReadBytes(InputBuffer.java:287)
    at org.apache.tomcat.util.buf.ByteChunk.substract(ByteChunk.java:407)
    at org.apache.catalina.connector.InputBuffer.read(InputBuffer.java:310)
    at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteInputStream.read(CoyoteInputStream.java:202)
    at java.nio.channels.Channels$ReadableByteChannelImpl.read(Unknown Source)
    at com.model.FileUploaderRunnable.run(FileUploaderRunnable.java:39)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Keeping in mind the point 1., does the use of Executor framework help me in anyway ?
package com.utils;
import java.util.concurrent.Future;
import java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor;
public final class ProcessUtils {
    /* Ensure that no more than 2 uploads,processing req. are allowed */
    private static final ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor threadPoolExec = new ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor(
            2);
    public static <T> Future<T> submitTask(Runnable task, T result) {
        return threadPoolExec.submit(task, result);
    }
}
So how should I ensure that the user doesn't block and the stream remains accessible so that the (uploaded)file can be read from it?