Simple Example of CompletableFuture

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In the example below, the calculateShippingPrice method calculates shipping cost, which takes some processing time. In a real world example, this would e.g. be contacting another server which returns the price based on the weight of the product and the shipping method.

By modeling this in an async way via CompletableFuture, we can continue different work in the method (i.e. calculating packaging costs).

public static void main(String[] args) {
    int price = 15; // Let's keep it simple and work with whole number prices here
    int weightInGrams = 900;
    
    calculateShippingPrice(weightInGrams) // Here, we get the future
        .thenAccept(shippingPrice -> { // And then immediately work on it!
            // This fluent style is very useful for keeping it concise
            System.out.println("Your total price is: " + (price + shippingPrice));
        });
    System.out.println("Please stand by. We are calculating your total price.");
}

public static CompletableFuture<Integer> calculateShippingPrice(int weightInGrams) {
    return CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(() -> { 
        // supplyAsync is a factory method that turns a given 
        // Supplier<U> into a CompletableFuture<U>

        // Let's just say each 200 grams is a new dollar on your shipping costs
        int shippingCosts = weightInGrams / 200;
        
        try {
            Thread.sleep(2000L); // Now let's simulate some waiting time...
        } catch(InterruptedException e) { /* We can safely ignore that */ }

        return shippingCosts; // And send the costs back!
    });
}

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

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