Java: Handle Exceptions from Threads

In this post I want to describe handling exceptions from threads with the ThreadGroup class and the uncaughtExceptionHandler.

First we create a Thread which does useful stuff and throws an exception at some time:

public class PfostenThread implements Runnable {    
    @Override
    public void run() {
        for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) {
            System.out.println("Pfosten: " + i);

            if (i == 31456) {
                //Cause an exception
                i = i / 0;
            }
        }
    }
}

No we will start our thread from the main method of our Java program:

import java.lang.Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        PfostenThreadGroup group = new PfostenThreadGroup("PfostenGruppe");
        Thread t = new Thread(new PfostenThread(), "Pfosten");
        t.start();      
    }
}

This thread will throw a divide by zero exception:

To catch the exception we will now extend the ThreadGroup class:

public class PfostenThreadGroup extends ThreadGroup {

    public PfostenThreadGroup(String name) {
        super(name);
    }

    @Override
    public void uncaughtException(Thread t, Throwable e) {
            System.out.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
    }
}

If we start our Thread with this group, the exception will be caught by the "uncaugtException" method in our ThreadGroup:

PfostenThreadGroup group = new PfostenThreadGroup("PfostenGruppe");
Thread t = new Thread(new PfostenThread(), "Pfosten");
t.start();