How to throw a checked exception from a java thread?

Question

Hey, I'm writing a network application, in which I read packets of some custom binary format. And I'm starting a background thread to wait for incoming data. The problem is, that the compiler doesn't let me to put any code throwing (checked) exceptions into run(). It says:

run() in (...).Listener cannot implement run() in java.lang.Runnable; overridden method does not throw java.io.IOException

I want the exception to kill the thread, and let it be caught somewhere in the parent thread. Is this possible to achieve or do I have to handle every exception inside the thread?

Answer 1

To be able to send the exception to the parent thread, you can put your background thread in a Callable (it allows throwing also checked exceptions) which you then pass to the submit method of some Executor. The submit method will return a Future which you can then use to get the exception (its get method will throw an ExecutionException which contains the original exception).