Listen and Notify provide a simple form of signal or interprocess communication mechanism for a collection of processes accessing the same PostgreSQL™ database. For more information on notifications consult the main server documentation. This section only deals with the JDBC specific aspects of notifications.
Standard LISTEN
, NOTIFY
, and
UNLISTEN
commands are issued via the
standard Statement
interface. To retrieve
and process retrieved notifications the
Connection
must be cast to the
PostgreSQL™ specific extension interface
PGConnection
. From there the
getNotifications()
method can be used to retrieve
any outstanding notifications.
A key limitation of the JDBC driver is that it cannot receive asynchronous notifications and must poll the backend to check if any notifications were issued.
Example 9.2. Receiving Notifications
import java.sql.*; public class NotificationTest { public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception { Class.forName("org.postgresql.Driver"); String url = "jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/test"; // Create two distinct connections, one for the notifier // and another for the listener to show the communication // works across connections although this example would // work fine with just one connection. Connection lConn = DriverManager.getConnection(url,"test",""); Connection nConn = DriverManager.getConnection(url,"test",""); // Create two threads, one to issue notifications and // the other to receive them. Listener listener = new Listener(lConn); Notifier notifier = new Notifier(nConn); listener.start(); notifier.start(); } } class Listener extends Thread { private Connection conn; private org.postgresql.PGConnection pgconn; Listener(Connection conn) throws SQLException { this.conn = conn; this.pgconn = (org.postgresql.PGConnection)conn; Statement stmt = conn.createStatement(); stmt.execute("LISTEN mymessage"); stmt.close(); } public void run() { while (true) { try { // issue a dummy query to contact the backend // and receive any pending notifications. Statement stmt = conn.createStatement(); ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("SELECT 1"); rs.close(); stmt.close(); org.postgresql.PGNotification notifications[] = pgconn.getNotifications(); if (notifications != null) { for (int i=0; i<notifications.length; i++) { System.out.println("Got notification: " + notifications[i].getName()); } } // wait a while before checking again for new // notifications Thread.sleep(500); } catch (SQLException sqle) { sqle.printStackTrace(); } catch (InterruptedException ie) { ie.printStackTrace(); } } } } class Notifier extends Thread { private Connection conn; public Notifier(Connection conn) { this.conn = conn; } public void run() { while (true) { try { Statement stmt = conn.createStatement(); stmt.execute("NOTIFY mymessage"); stmt.close(); Thread.sleep(2000); } catch (SQLException sqle) { sqle.printStackTrace(); } catch (InterruptedException ie) { ie.printStackTrace(); } } } }