Time limit on individual threads with ExecutorService

Question

I have an ExecutorService managing a number of Callables. The tasks that the Callables run are mostly black box transformations and number crunching. Under certain conditions, the data being transformed will oscillate and the thread will take over an hour to finish. For comparison, most threads are completed within a minute.

It's been deteremined that the data from the long-running threads is not relevent. I would like to interrupt any thread that runs longer than a certain amount of time. What would the best way to do this?

Answer 1

Use a ScheduleExecutorService to schedule a task to taskFuture.cancel(true) the long running task when the timeout is reached. If the task finishes before then it won't be cancelled.

ExecutorService service = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(N);
ScheduledExecutorService canceller = Executors.newSingleThreadScheduledExecutor();

public <T> Future<T> executeTask(Callable<T> c, long timeoutMS){
   final Future<T> future = service.submit(c);
   canceller.schedule(new Callable<Void>(){
       public Void call(){
          future.cancel(true);
          return null;
       }
    }, timeoutMS, TimeUnit.MILLI_SECONDS);
   return future;
}