Get Thread By Name

Question

I have a multithreaded application and I assign a unique name to each thread through setName() property. Now, I want functionality to get access to the threads directly with their corresponding name.

Somethings like the following function:

public Thread getThreadByName(String threadName) {     Thread __tmp = null;      Set<Thread> threadSet = Thread.getAllStackTraces().keySet();     Thread[] threadArray = threadSet.toArray(new Thread[threadSet.size()]);      for (int i = 0; i < threadArray.length; i++) {         if (threadArray[i].getName().equals(threadName))             __tmp =  threadArray[i];     }      return __tmp; } 

The above function checks all running threads and then returns the desired thread from the set of running threads. Maybe my desired thread is interrupted, then the above function won't work. Any ideas on how to incorporate that functionality?

Answer 1

An iteration of Pete's answer..

public Thread getThreadByName(String threadName) {     for (Thread t : Thread.getAllStackTraces().keySet()) {         if (t.getName().equals(threadName)) return t;     }     return null; } 

Answer 2

You can find all active threads using ThreadGroup:

• Get your current thread's group
• Work your way up the threadgroup hierarchy by calling ThreadGroup.getParent() until you find a group with a null parent.
• Call ThreadGroup.enumerate() to find all threads on the system.

The value of doing this completely escapes me ... what will you possibly do with a named thread? Unless you're subclassing Thread when you should be implementing Runnable (which is sloppy programming to start with).