    001/*
    002 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
    003 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
    004 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
    005 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
    006 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
    007 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
    008 *
    009 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
    010 *
    011 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
    012 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
    013 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
    014 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
    015 * limitations under the License.
    016 */
    017package org.apache.commons.lang3.concurrent;
    018
    019/**
    020 * <p>
    021 * This class provides a generic implementation of the lazy initialization
    022 * pattern.
    023 * </p>
    024 * <p>
    025 * Sometimes an application has to deal with an object only under certain
    026 * circumstances, e.g. when the user selects a specific menu item or if a
    027 * special event is received. If the creation of the object is costly or the
    028 * consumption of memory or other system resources is significant, it may make
    029 * sense to defer the creation of this object until it is really needed. This is
    030 * a use case for the lazy initialization pattern.
    031 * </p>
    032 * <p>
    033 * This abstract base class provides an implementation of the double-check idiom
    034 * for an instance field as discussed in Joshua Bloch's "Effective Java", 2nd
    035 * edition, item 71. The class already implements all necessary synchronization.
    036 * A concrete subclass has to implement the {@code initialize()} method, which
    037 * actually creates the wrapped data object.
    038 * </p>
    039 * <p>
    040 * As an usage example consider that we have a class {@code ComplexObject} whose
    041 * instantiation is a complex operation. In order to apply lazy initialization
    042 * to this class, a subclass of {@code LazyInitializer} has to be created:
    043 * </p>
    044 *
    045 * <pre>
    046 * public class ComplexObjectInitializer extends LazyInitializer&lt;ComplexObject&gt; {
    047 *     &#064;Override
    048 *     protected ComplexObject initialize() {
    049 *         return new ComplexObject();
    050 *     }
    051 * }
    052 * </pre>
    053 *
    054 * <p>
    055 * Access to the data object is provided through the {@code get()} method. So,
    056 * code that wants to obtain the {@code ComplexObject} instance would simply
    057 * look like this:
    058 * </p>
    059 *
    060 * <pre>
    061 * // Create an instance of the lazy initializer
    062 * ComplexObjectInitializer initializer = new ComplexObjectInitializer();
    063 * ...
    064 * // When the object is actually needed:
    065 * ComplexObject cobj = initializer.get();
    066 * </pre>
    067 *
    068 * <p>
    069 * If multiple threads call the {@code get()} method when the object has not yet
    070 * been created, they are blocked until initialization completes. The algorithm
    071 * guarantees that only a single instance of the wrapped object class is
    072 * created, which is passed to all callers. Once initialized, calls to the
    073 * {@code get()} method are pretty fast because no synchronization is needed
    074 * (only an access to a <b>volatile</b> member field).
    075 * </p>
    076 *
    077 * @since 3.0
    078 * @param <T> the type of the object managed by this initializer class
    079 */
    080public abstract class LazyInitializer<T> implements ConcurrentInitializer<T> {
    081
    082    private static final Object NO_INIT = new Object();
    083
    084    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    085    /** Stores the managed object. */
    086    private volatile T object = (T) NO_INIT;
    087
    088    /**
    089     * Returns the object wrapped by this instance. On first access the object
    090     * is created. After that it is cached and can be accessed pretty fast.
    091     *
    092     * @return the object initialized by this {@code LazyInitializer}
    093     * @throws ConcurrentException if an error occurred during initialization of
    094     * the object
    095     */
    096    @Override
    097    public T get() throws ConcurrentException {
    098        // use a temporary variable to reduce the number of reads of the
    099        // volatile field
    100        T result = object;
    101
    102        if (result == NO_INIT) {
    103            synchronized (this) {
    104                result = object;
    105                if (result == NO_INIT) {
    106                    object = result = initialize();
    107                }
    108            }
    109        }
    110
    111        return result;
    112    }
    113
    114    /**
    115     * Creates and initializes the object managed by this {@code
    116     * LazyInitializer}. This method is called by {@link #get()} when the object
    117     * is accessed for the first time. An implementation can focus on the
    118     * creation of the object. No synchronization is needed, as this is already
    119     * handled by {@code get()}.
    120     *
    121     * @return the managed data object
    122     * @throws ConcurrentException if an error occurs during object creation
    123     */
    124    protected abstract T initialize() throws ConcurrentException;
    125}