Execute thread from another class?

[J Gib]

Hey everyone,
Heres my situation: I'm already extending Applet so extending Thread is not an option. I've already used the "Run()" method in the class i've been coding, but i need to run another thread which does something completely different: (Checks to see if a txt file has been changed every 60 seconds) -- since i can't have a second "Run" method in that class, im guessing that i need to make a second class with it's own Run() and somehow execute that method from my original class. Does that sound about right? if so, how do i do it?! I've been researching this for several days with no luck.. if anybody can help me out or possibly suggest some alternatives i would really appreciate it.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Hi,

Welcome to JavaRanch!

Yes, you can simply define a second class that implements Runnable, and just pass an instance of that to the Thread constructor instead of "this".

new Thread(new MyOtherClass()).start();

If MyOtherClass needs access to parts of the main class, then you have several alternatives. The easiest one may be to simply use an inner class -- a class defined inside another class. The inner class has access to its outer class's private members.

class MyApplet extends Applet implements Runnable, ActionListener {
 
    public void run() { ... }
 
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae) {
        ....
        new Thread(new MyOtherClass()).start(); 
    }
 
    class MyOtherClass implements Runnable {
        public void run() {
            // Code here has access to everything defined in MyApplet
        }
    }
}