How to Gracefully Interrupt a Blocking ServerSocket.accept() Call in Java?

Interruption of ServerSocket.accept() Blocking Call

In Java's networking paradigm, the blocking nature of ServerSocket.accept() method might hinder program execution when needing to respond to external events. When the main thread enters a while(listening) loop continuously invoking accept() to accept new client connections, it becomes challenging to interrupt this process and respond to administrative commands.

The ServerSocket class doesn't provide any intrinsic mechanism to interrupt the accept() method. However, a solution to this problem lies in exploiting the underlying ServerSocketChannel associated with the ServerSocket object. The ServerSocketChannel class offers a close() method that, when invoked from another thread, terminates the ongoing accept() call gracefully. The exception, SocketException, is then thrown within the accept() method and can be handled appropriately within the main thread, allowing it to respond to the received command.

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