[java] Is it possible to read from a InputStream with a timeout?

Here is a way to get a NIO FileChannel from System.in and check for availability of data using a timeout, which is a special case of the problem described in the question. Run it at the console, don't type any input, and wait for the results. It was tested successfully under Java 6 on Windows and Linux.

import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FilterInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.lang.reflect.Field;
import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
import java.nio.channels.ClosedByInterruptException;

public class Main {

    static final ByteBuffer buf = ByteBuffer.allocate(4096);

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        long timeout = 1000 * 5;

        try {
            InputStream in = extract(System.in);
            if (! (in instanceof FileInputStream))
                throw new RuntimeException(
                        "Could not extract a FileInputStream from STDIN.");

            try {
                int ret = maybeAvailable((FileInputStream)in, timeout);
                System.out.println(
                        Integer.toString(ret) + " bytes were read.");

            } finally {
                in.close();
            }

        } catch (Exception e) {
            throw new RuntimeException(e);
        }

    }

    /* unravels all layers of FilterInputStream wrappers to get to the
     * core InputStream
     */
    public static InputStream extract(InputStream in)
            throws NoSuchFieldException, IllegalAccessException {

        Field f = FilterInputStream.class.getDeclaredField("in");
        f.setAccessible(true);

        while( in instanceof FilterInputStream )
            in = (InputStream)f.get((FilterInputStream)in);

        return in;
    }

    /* Returns the number of bytes which could be read from the stream,
     * timing out after the specified number of milliseconds.
     * Returns 0 on timeout (because no bytes could be read)
     * and -1 for end of stream.
     */
    public static int maybeAvailable(final FileInputStream in, long timeout)
            throws IOException, InterruptedException {

        final int[] dataReady = {0};
        final IOException[] maybeException = {null};
        final Thread reader = new Thread() {
            public void run() {                
                try {
                    dataReady[0] = in.getChannel().read(buf);
                } catch (ClosedByInterruptException e) {
                    System.err.println("Reader interrupted.");
                } catch (IOException e) {
                    maybeException[0] = e;
                }
            }
        };

        Thread interruptor = new Thread() {
            public void run() {
                reader.interrupt();
            }
        };

        reader.start();
        for(;;) {

            reader.join(timeout);
            if (!reader.isAlive())
                break;

            interruptor.start();
            interruptor.join(1000);
            reader.join(1000);
            if (!reader.isAlive())
                break;

            System.err.println("We're hung");
            System.exit(1);
        }

        if ( maybeException[0] != null )
            throw maybeException[0];

        return dataReady[0];
    }
}

Interestingly, when running the program inside NetBeans 6.5 rather than at the console, the timeout doesn't work at all, and the call to System.exit() is actually necessary to kill the zombie threads. What happens is that the interruptor thread blocks (!) on the call to reader.interrupt(). Another test program (not shown here) additionally tries to close the channel, but that doesn't work either.