Java™ How to Program, Seventh Edition

23.7. Producer/Consumer Relationship: ArrayBlockingQueue

One way to synchronize producer and consumer threads is to use classes from Java’s concurrency package that encapsulate the synchronization for you. Java includes the class ArrayBlockingQueue (from package java.util.concurrent)—a fully implemented, thread-safe buffer class that implements interface BlockingQueue. This interface extends the Queue interface discussed in Chapter 19 and declares methods put and take, the blocking equivalents of Queue methods offer and poll, respectively. Method put places an element at the end of the BlockingQueue, waiting if the queue is full. Method take removes an element from the head of the BlockingQueue, waiting if the queue is empty. These methods make ...