Waiting on a list of Future

Question

You can use a CompletionService to receive the futures as soon as they are ready and if one of them throws an exception cancel the processing. Something like this:

Executor executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(4);
CompletionService<SomeResult> completionService = 
       new ExecutorCompletionService<SomeResult>(executor);

//4 tasks
for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
   completionService.submit(new Callable<SomeResult>() {
       public SomeResult call() {
           ...
           return result;
       }
   });
}

int received = 0;
boolean errors = false;

while(received < 4 && !errors) {
      Future<SomeResult> resultFuture = completionService.take(); //blocks if none available
      try {
         SomeResult result = resultFuture.get();
         received ++;
         ... // do something with the result
      }
      catch(Exception e) {
             //log
         errors = true;
      }
}

I think you can further improve to cancel any still executing tasks if one of them throws an error.

If you are using Java 8 then you can do this easier with CompletableFuture and CompletableFuture.allOf, which applies the callback only after all supplied CompletableFutures are done.

// Waits for *all* futures to complete and returns a list of results.
// If *any* future completes exceptionally then the resulting future will also complete exceptionally.

public static <T> CompletableFuture<List<T>> all(List<CompletableFuture<T>> futures) {
    CompletableFuture[] cfs = futures.toArray(new CompletableFuture[futures.size()]);

    return CompletableFuture.allOf(cfs)
            .thenApply(ignored -> futures.stream()
                                    .map(CompletableFuture::join)
                                    .collect(Collectors.toList())
            );
}

Use a CompletableFuture in Java 8

    // Kick of multiple, asynchronous lookups
    CompletableFuture<User> page1 = gitHubLookupService.findUser("Test1");
    CompletableFuture<User> page2 = gitHubLookupService.findUser("Test2");
    CompletableFuture<User> page3 = gitHubLookupService.findUser("Test3");

    // Wait until they are all done
    CompletableFuture.allOf(page1,page2,page3).join();

    logger.info("--> " + page1.get());

You can use an ExecutorCompletionService. The documentation even has an example for your exact use-case:

Suppose instead that you would like to use the first non-null result of the set of tasks, ignoring any that encounter exceptions, and cancelling all other tasks when the first one is ready:

void solve(Executor e, Collection<Callable<Result>> solvers) throws InterruptedException {
    CompletionService<Result> ecs = new ExecutorCompletionService<Result>(e);
    int n = solvers.size();
    List<Future<Result>> futures = new ArrayList<Future<Result>>(n);
    Result result = null;
    try {
        for (Callable<Result> s : solvers)
            futures.add(ecs.submit(s));
        for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
            try {
                Result r = ecs.take().get();
                if (r != null) {
                    result = r;
                    break;
                }
            } catch (ExecutionException ignore) {
            }
        }
    } finally {
        for (Future<Result> f : futures)
            f.cancel(true);
    }

    if (result != null)
        use(result);
}

The important thing to notice here is that ecs.take() will get the first completed task, not just the first submitted one. Thus you should get them in the order of finishing the execution (or throwing an exception).

If you are using Java 8 and don't want to manipulate CompletableFutures, I have written a tool to retrieve results for a List<Future<T>> using streaming. The key is that you are forbidden to map(Future::get) as it throws.

public final class Futures
{

    private Futures()
    {}

    public static <E> Collector<Future<E>, Collection<E>, List<E>> present()
    {
        return new FutureCollector<>();
    }

    private static class FutureCollector<T> implements Collector<Future<T>, Collection<T>, List<T>>
    {
        private final List<Throwable> exceptions = new LinkedList<>();

        @Override
        public Supplier<Collection<T>> supplier()
        {
            return LinkedList::new;
        }

        @Override
        public BiConsumer<Collection<T>, Future<T>> accumulator()
        {
            return (r, f) -> {
                try
                {
                    r.add(f.get());
                }
                catch (InterruptedException e)
                {}
                catch (ExecutionException e)
                {
                    exceptions.add(e.getCause());
                }
            };
        }

        @Override
        public BinaryOperator<Collection<T>> combiner()
        {
            return (l1, l2) -> {
                l1.addAll(l2);
                return l1;
            };
        }

        @Override
        public Function<Collection<T>, List<T>> finisher()
        {
            return l -> {

                List<T> ret = new ArrayList<>(l);
                if (!exceptions.isEmpty())
                    throw new AggregateException(exceptions, ret);

                return ret;
            };

        }

        @Override
        public Set<java.util.stream.Collector.Characteristics> characteristics()
        {
            return java.util.Collections.emptySet();
        }
    }

This needs an AggregateException that works like C#'s

public class AggregateException extends RuntimeException
{
    /**
     *
     */
    private static final long serialVersionUID = -4477649337710077094L;

    private final List<Throwable> causes;
    private List<?> successfulElements;

    public AggregateException(List<Throwable> causes, List<?> l)
    {
        this.causes = causes;
        successfulElements = l;
    }

    public AggregateException(List<Throwable> causes)
    {
        this.causes = causes;
    }

    @Override
    public synchronized Throwable getCause()
    {
        return this;
    }

    public List<Throwable> getCauses()
    {
        return causes;
    }

    public List<?> getSuccessfulElements()
    {
        return successfulElements;
    }

    public void setSuccessfulElements(List<?> successfulElements)
    {
        this.successfulElements = successfulElements;
    }

}

This component acts exactly as C#'s Task.WaitAll. I am working on a variant that does the same as CompletableFuture.allOf (equivalento to Task.WhenAll)

The reason why I did this is that I am using Spring's ListenableFuture and don't want to port to CompletableFuture despite it is a more standard way

In case that you want combine a List of CompletableFutures, you can do this :

List<CompletableFuture<Void>> futures = new ArrayList<>();
// ... Add futures to this ArrayList of CompletableFutures

// CompletableFuture.allOf() method demand a variadic arguments
// You can use this syntax to pass a List instead
CompletableFuture<Void> allFutures = CompletableFuture.allOf(
            futures.toArray(new CompletableFuture[futures.size()]));

// Wait for all individual CompletableFuture to complete
// All individual CompletableFutures are executed in parallel
allFutures.get();

For more details on Future & CompletableFuture, useful links:
1. Future: https://www.baeldung.com/java-future
2. CompletableFuture: https://www.baeldung.com/java-completablefuture
3. CompletableFuture: https://www.callicoder.com/java-8-completablefuture-tutorial/