I'm new to Java and I want to implement a buffer of byte[] which one thread can write into, and another thread can read from.
It sounds like it should have already been implemented in java, but I spent hours trying to find/understand several number of classes, and I didn't understand if it does what I want, and how to use it.
I saw BufferedInputStream, ByteBuffer, ByteChannel, BlockingQueue...
Can someone please point to a more specific direction?
I use SDK 1.6
If you're looking to simply stream bytes from one thread to the other, I suggest you use PipedInputStream and PipedOutputStream. Though note that it's likely you're in this position where you need a solution such as this because of a design fault.
Here is how you would do such thing, for instance:
PipedOutputStream out = new PipedOutputStream();
PipedInputStream in = new PipedInputStream(out);
new YourReadingThread(in).start();
new YourWritingThread(out).start();
Then anything you write to out will be available for reading through in.
If you're looking for a solution to make a thread safe ByteBuffer, I would suggest you use a ReentrantReadWriteLock:
ReentrantReadWriteLock lock = new ReentrantReadWriteLock();
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(n);
// Reading thread:
lock.readLock().lock();
buffer.get(i);
lock.readLock().unlock();
// Writing thread:
lock.writeLock().lock();
buffer.put(b,i);
lock.writeLock().unlock();
Sorry, ByteBuffer wasn't good for me cause it involves playing with the position of the buffer.
I realized all I really needed was a simple pipe (I don't know how could I forget about pipes).
I used an example from here:
PipedOutputStream output = new PipedOutputStream();
PipedInputStream input = new PipedInputStream(output);