SwingWorker

SwingWorker is a utility class developed by Sun Microsystems for the Swing library of the Java programming language. SwingWorker enables proper use of the event dispatching thread. As of Java 6, SwingWorker is included in the JRE.

Several incompatible, unofficial, versions of SwingWorker were produced from 1998 to 2006, and care must be taken to avoid the abundant documentation on these versions predating Java 6.

The event dispatching thread problem
SwingWorker is useful when a time-consuming task has to be performed following a user-interaction event (for example, parsing a huge XML File, on pressing a JButton). The most straightforward way to do it is : This will work, but unfortunately, the  method will be called in the same thread as the main Swing thread (the Event dispatching thread), so if the method needs time to perform, the GUI will freeze during this time.

SwingWorker solution
This problem is not specific to Java, but common to many GUI models. proposes a way to solve it by performing the time-consuming task on another background thread, keeping the GUI responsive during this time.

Creating the worker
The following code defines the SwingWorker, which encapsulates the  method call :

Worker execution
Execution is started by using the  method.

Retrieving the result
The result can be retrieved by using the  method.

As calling  on the Event Dispatch Thread blocks all events, including repaints, from being processed until the task completes, one must avoid calling it before the lengthy operation has finished. There are two ways to retrieve the result after the task completion :
 * override the  method. This method is called on the main event dispatching thread.
 * register a listener by using the worker  method. The listener will be notified of changes in the worker state.

History: Usage before Java 6.0
SwingWorker has been part of Java SE only since Java 6.0. Sun has released versions to be used with earlier JDKs, although they were unofficial versions which were not part of the Java SE and were not mentioned in the standard library documentation. The most recent of these versions dates from 2003 and is often referred to as SwingWorker version 3. Unfortunately, the JDK 6.0 SwingWorker and the Version 3 SwingWorker use different method names and are not compatible. The backport version (see below) is now recommended for pre-Java 6 usage.

An example for instantiating SwingWorker 3 is shown below:

The  method executes the code added in the construct method in a separate thread. To be alerted when the background thread finishes, one need only override the  method. The  method can return a result which can later be retrieved using SwingWorker's   method.

Backport of the Java 6 SwingWorker
A backport of the Java 6 SwingWorker to Java 5 is available at http://swingworker.java.net/. Apart from the package name, it is compatible with the Java 6 SwingWorker.

Equivalents

 * - .NET Framework
 * - Adobe Flash
 * - Android