Tickers in Groovy

In Groovy, we can use a similar concept to tickers by using a Timer and TimerTask. Here’s an example that demonstrates periodic execution at regular intervals:

import java.util.Timer
import java.util.TimerTask

// Create a new Timer
def timer = new Timer()

// Create a boolean flag to control the execution
def running = true

// Create a TimerTask that will run periodically
def task = new TimerTask() {
    void run() {
        if (running) {
            println "Tick at ${new Date()}"
        } else {
            timer.cancel()
        }
    }
}

// Schedule the task to run every 500 milliseconds
timer.schedule(task, 0, 500)

// Let it run for about 1600 milliseconds
Thread.sleep(1600)

// Stop the timer
running = false
println "Timer stopped"

In this example, we use a Timer and a TimerTask to achieve periodic execution. The TimerTask is scheduled to run every 500 milliseconds.

We use a boolean flag running to control the execution. When we want to stop the timer, we set this flag to false.

The main thread sleeps for 1600 milliseconds, allowing the timer to tick approximately 3 times before we stop it.

When we run this program, the output should look similar to this:

Tick at Wed Jun 14 10:30:00 PDT 2023
Tick at Wed Jun 14 10:30:00 PDT 2023
Tick at Wed Jun 14 10:30:01 PDT 2023
Timer stopped

This demonstrates how we can perform periodic tasks in Groovy and how to stop them when they’re no longer needed. While Groovy doesn’t have built-in tickers like some other languages, we can achieve similar functionality using timers and tasks.