servlet creating a new thread

[Peter Straw]

Hi,
I want my servlet to start a new thread that will call one simple method once a day and sleep the rest of the time and run indefinitely.
At the moment I have got the code for creating the thread in the init() method of the servlet:
public class MyServlet extends HttpServlet implements Runnable
{
private Thread thread = (Thread) null;
public void init()
{
MyServlet app = new MyServlet();
if ( this.thread == null )
{
thread = new Thread ( app );
thread.start();
}
}
}
and then I visit the servlet in the web browser to kick the thing off.
Is this the right way to do this - creating a new instance of the servlet in the init method and spawing a new thread from this?
Many thanks,
Peter

[Tim Holloway]

Almost.
If you define the servlet as "load on startup" in your server.xml file, init will automatically be run when the appserver starts and you won't have to resort to questionable kludges. Just create the thread in init and store its handle in a class variable.
I often implement this as what I (mis)call a "null servlet". That is, a servlet that launches a thread or gathers resources but has no doGet or doPost code.
The other common practice is if the thread is some sort of batch process "engine", the doGet/Post routine may insert requests into the thread's input queue and/or query a thread for results.