Java – get threads waiting indefinitely

I have a java thread to handle outgoing communication with the socket I just want the thread to run, and the pending output is ready to be sent Say I have a stack < string > which stores the data waiting to be sent. I want the communication thread to wake up when adding something to the stack and enter the sleep state when the stack is empty Is this the best way?

The options I see are

>Use wait () / notify () – now seems to be the old way of this behavior > if there is anything to send, perform thread checking every x milliseconds, build a new thread each time (expensive) keep the thread running (expensive) > implement some thread pool or actuator solutions

Any suggestion would be great:)

Solution

BlockingQueue is exactly what you are looking for Your communication thread is blocked on take (). When some other thread is added / placed, it will be awakened immediately

This approach has several advantages: you can have multiple threads (consumers) sharing the same queue to increase throughput and multiple threads (producers) generating messages (messaging)