In a job interview they requested to me to develop an application that should be a server and a client. The server should allow several connections at the same time to increase/decrease a counter. The counter should be persisted allowing the application to recover last counter number from crash/normal exit. The communication should be done through TCP and the protocol should be defined. I already did the app but, as I am no experienced with multithreadind I would like to check whether I did it right. :)

First I did a server that will receive the calls, each time a call is received, a new thread is created to process the request by using FixedThreadPool. In order to work with the file that will persist the counter I have defined a SynchronousQueue, it will ensure that the file is modified once at a time for each requested.

Java Code: 
public class Server extends Thread {
    
    private ServerSocket serverSocket = null;    
    private ExecutorService pool = null;
    private SynchronousQueue bq = null;
    
    
    public Server(int port, int poolSize) throws IOException {
        this.serverSocket = new ServerSocket(port);
        this.pool = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(poolSize);
        this.bq = new SynchronousQueue(true);        
    }
    
    @Override
    public void run() {
        try {
            PersistCounter pc = new PersistCounter(this.bq); 
            pc.start();
 
            for (;;) {                
                pool.execute(new Operation(serverSocket.accept(), this.bq));
            }
            
        } catch (IOException ex) {
            if (Boolean.FALSE.equals(this.serverSocket.isClosed())) {
                try {
                    this.serverSocket.close();
                } catch (IOException ex1) {
                    ex1.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
            
            pool.shutdown();            
        }            
    }    
}


Each processing the request will check whether the received command (INC/DEC) is right or wrong, returning OK or ERR to client. If comand is ok, will put the command in the queue.

Java Code: 
public class Operation extends Thread {
 
    private Socket socket = null;
    private SynchronousQueue bq = null;
 
    public Operation(Socket socket, SynchronousQueue bq) {
        this.socket = socket;
        this.bq = bq;
    }
 
    @Override
    public void run() {
        try {
 
            BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
                    this.socket.getInputStream()));
            PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(this.socket.getOutputStream());
 
            String command = in.readLine();
 
            System.out.println("Received command is: " + command);
 
 
            if (Boolean.TRUE.equals("INC".equalsIgnoreCase(command.trim()))) {
                try {
                    System.out.println("Putting on queue...");
                    bq.put("INC");
                    pw.println("OK");
                    pw.flush();
 
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    System.out.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
                    pw.println("ERR");
                    pw.flush();
                }
            } else if (Boolean.TRUE.equals("DEC"
                    .equalsIgnoreCase(command.trim()))) {
 
                try {
                    bq.put("DEC");
                    pw.println("OK");
                    pw.flush();
 
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    pw.println("ERR");
                    pw.flush();
 
                    System.out.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
                }
 
            } else {
                System.out.println("Wrong command..");
                pw.println("ERR");
            }
 
 
            System.out.println("Closing resources");
 
            in.close();
            pw.close();
            this.socket.close();
 
        } catch (SocketException se) {
            System.out.println("Error: " + se.getMessage());
        } catch (IOException ex) {
            System.out.println("Error: " + ex.getMessage());
        } finally {
            try {
                System.out.println("Closing socket");
                this.socket.close();
            } catch (IOException ex) {
                System.out.println("Error closing socket..." + ex.getMessage());
            }
        }
    }
}


The real operation on the counter is performed by a class that works as a consumer of the queue:

Java Code: 
public class PersistCounter extends Thread {
 
    private SynchronousQueue bq = null;
    
    private File file = new File("./data.txt");
    
    public PersistCounter(SynchronousQueue bq) {
        this.bq = bq;
        try {
            checkFile(this.file);
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            System.out.println("Error: " + ex.getMessage());
        }
    }
 
    public void run() {
 
        try {
            while (true) {
                String operation = (String) this.bq.take();
                doOperation(operation, this.file);
            }
 
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.out.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
        }
    }
 
    private void doOperation(String operation, File file) throws Exception {
        // Read file
        FileChannel fc = new FileInputStream(file).getChannel();
        ByteBuffer buff = ByteBuffer.allocate(10);
        fc.read(buff);
 
        // Convert from ByteBuffer to String.
        byte[] bArray = new byte[buff.limit()];
 
        for (int x = 0; x < buff.limit() - 1; x++) {
            bArray[x] = buff.get(x);
        }
 
        // Get current value.
        int current = Integer.parseInt(new String(bArray).trim());
        fc.close();
 
        System.out.println("Current value: " + current);
 
        if ("INC".equalsIgnoreCase(operation)) {
            current++;
        } else {
            current--;
        }
 
        System.out.println("New value: " + current);
        
        // Store new value on file.
        fc = new FileOutputStream(file).getChannel();
        fc.write(ByteBuffer.wrap(new Integer(current).toString().getBytes()));
        fc.close();
    }
    
    
    /**
     * Will check whether the file required to persist counter exists or not.
     * If file does not exists, it will be created and initialized to zero.
     * 
     * @param file
     * @throws Exception 
     */
    private void checkFile(File file) throws Exception {
        
        if (Boolean.FALSE.equals(file.exists())) {
            System.out.println("File does not exists. Will be created!");
            PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(file);
            // Initialize file with 0
            pw.print("0");
            pw.flush();
            pw.close();
        } else {
            System.out.println("File: " + file.getAbsolutePath() 
                    + " already exists!");            
        }        
    }
}


The client is very silly and just work sending commands to the server.

Is my code right? I mean, is it thread safe? I have tested it and it worked fine but I would like whether I did it right or could be a better way... :)

Thanks in advance
C