completable-futures

completable-futures is a set of utility functions to simplify working with asynchronous code in Java8.

Usage

Using completable-futures requires Java 8 but has no additional dependencies. It is meant to be included as a library in other software. To import it with maven, add this to your pom:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.spotify</groupId>
    <artifactId>completable-futures</artifactId>
    <version>0.3.1</version>
</dependency>

Features

Combining more than two things

The builtin CompletableFuture API includes future.thenCombine(otherFuture, function) but if you want to combine more than two things it gets trickier. The CompletableFutures class contains the following APIs to simplify this use-case:

allAsList

If you want to join a list of futures of uniform type, use allAsList. This returns a future which completes to a list of all values of its inputs:

List<CompletableFuture<String>> futures = asList(completedFuture("a"), completedFuture("b"));
CompletableFuture<List<String>> joined = CompletableFutures.allAsList(futures);

successfulAsList

Works like allAsList, but futures that fail will not fail the joined future. Instead, the defaultValueMapper function will be called once for each failed future and value returned will be put in the resulting list on the place corresponding to the failed future. The default value returned by the function may be anything, such as null or Optional.empty().

List<CompletableFuture<String>> input = asList(
    completedFuture("a"),
    exceptionallyCompletedFuture(new RuntimeException("boom")));
CompletableFuture<List<String>> joined = CompletableFutures.successfulAsList(input, t -> "default");

joinList

joinList is a stream collector that combines multiple futures into a list. This is handy if you apply an asynchronous operation to a collection of entities:

collection.stream()
    .map(this::someAsyncFunction)
    .collect(CompletableFutures.joinList())
    .thenApply(this::consumeList)

combine

If you want to combine more than two futures of different types, use the combine method:

CompletableFutures.combine(f1, f2, (a, b) -> a + b);
CompletableFutures.combine(f1, f2, f3, (a, b, c) -> a + b + c);
CompletableFutures.combine(f1, f2, f3, f4, (a, b, c, d) -> a + b + c + d);
CompletableFutures.combine(f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, (a, b, c, d, e) -> a + b + c + d + e);

combineFutures

If you want to combine multiple futures into another future, use combineFutures:

CompletableFutures.combineFutures(f1, f2, (a, b) -> completedFuture(a + b));
CompletableFutures.combineFutures(f1, f2, f3, (a, b, c) -> completedFuture(a + b + c));
CompletableFutures.combineFutures(f1, f2, f3, f4, (a, b, c, d) -> completedFuture(a + b + c + d));
CompletableFutures.combineFutures(f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, (a, b, c, d, e) -> completedFuture(a + b + c + d + e));

Scheduling

Polling an external resource

If you are dealing with a long-running external task that only exposes a polling API, you can transform that into a future like so:

Supplier<Optional<T>> pollingTask = () -> Optional.ofNullable(resource.result());
Duration frequency = Duration.ofSeconds(2);
CompletableFuture<T> result = CompletableFutures.poll(pollingTask, frequency, executor);

Missing parts of the CompletableFuture API

The CompletableFutures class includes utility functions for operating on futures that is missing from the builtin API.

handleCompose

Like CompletableFuture.handle but lets you return a new CompletionStage instead of a direct value.

CompletionStage<String> composed = handleCompose(future, (value, throwable) -> completedFuture("hello"));

exceptionallyCompose

Like CompletableFuture.exceptionally but lets you return a new CompletionStage instead of a direct value.

CompletionStage<String> composed = CompletableFutures.exceptionallyCompose(future, throwable -> completedFuture("fallback"));

dereference

Unwrap a CompletionStage<CompletionStage<T>> to a plain CompletionStage<T>.

CompletionStage<CompletionStage<String>> wrapped = completedFuture(completedFuture("hello"));
CompletionStage<String> unwrapped = CompletableFutures.dereference(wrapped);

exceptionallyCompletedFuture

Creates a new future that is already exceptionally completed with the given exception.

return CompletableFutures.exceptionallyCompletedFuture(new RuntimeException("boom"));

License

Copyright 2016 Spotify AB. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

Code of Conduct

This project adheres to the Open Code of Conduct. By participating, you are expected to honor this code.