Starting bbcomm in Java v3 Bloomberg API

Question

When I use the Java Bloomber V3 API it usually works. However, sometimes, especially after a reboot, bbcomm.exe is not running in the background. I can start it manually by

Answer 1

After spending some time with Help Help, it seems that bbcomm gets started either when you use the Excel API or run the API demo. But it does not get started automatically when called from the Java API. Possible ways to start it are:

• adding an entry in the registry to automatically start bbcomm on startup: in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run add a String value called bbcomm with value C:\blp\API\bbcomm.exe - but that opens a command window which remains visible, so not really an option (and if you close that window it terminates the bbcomm process)
• create a batch file START /MIN C:\blp\API\bbcomm.exe and replace the entry in the registry with that (not tested) to call bbcomm silently
• manually launch bbcomm from your java code as already suggested. As a reference, I post below the code that I'm using.

private final static Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(BloombergUtils.class);
private final static String BBCOMM_PROCESS  = "bbcomm.exe";
private final static String BBCOMM_FOLDER  = "C:/blp/API";

/**
 * 
 * @return true if the bbcomm process is running
 */
public static boolean isBloombergProcessRunning() {
    return ShellUtils.isProcessRunning(BBCOMM_PROCESS);
}

/**
 * Starts the bbcomm process, which is required to connect to the Bloomberg data feed
 * @return true if bbcomm was started successfully, false otherwise
 */
public static boolean startBloombergProcessIfNecessary() {
    if (isBloombergProcessRunning()) {
        logger.info(BBCOMM_PROCESS + " is started");
        return true;
    }

    Callable startBloombergProcess = getStartingCallable();
    return getResultWithTimeout(startBloombergProcess, 1, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}

private static Callable getStartingCallable() {
    return new Callable() {
        @Override
        public Boolean call() throws Exception {
            logger.info("Starting " + BBCOMM_PROCESS + " manually");
            ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder(BBCOMM_PROCESS);
            pb.directory(new File(BBCOMM_FOLDER));
            pb.redirectErrorStream(true);
            Process p = pb.start();
            BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));
            String line;
            while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
                if (line.toLowerCase().contains("started")) {
                    logger.info(BBCOMM_PROCESS + " is started");
                    return true;
                }
            }
            return false;
        }
    };

}

private static boolean getResultWithTimeout(Callable startBloombergProcess, int timeout, TimeUnit timeUnit) {
    ExecutorService executor = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor(new ThreadFactory() {

        @Override
        public Thread newThread(Runnable r) {
            Thread t = new Thread(r, "Bloomberg - bbcomm starter thread");
            t.setDaemon(true);
            return t;
        }
    });
    Future future = executor.submit(startBloombergProcess);

    try {
        return future.get(timeout, timeUnit);
    } catch (InterruptedException ignore) {
        Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
        return false;
    } catch (ExecutionException | TimeoutException e) {
        logger.error("Could not start bbcomm", e);
        return false;
    } finally {
        executor.shutdownNow();
        try {
            if (!executor.awaitTermination(100, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)) {
                logger.warn("bbcomm starter thread still running");
            }
        } catch (InterruptedException ex) {
            Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
        }
    }
}

ShellUtils.java

public class ShellUtils {

    private final static Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(ShellUtils.class);

    /**
     * @return a list of processes currently running
     * @throws RuntimeException if the request sent to the OS to get the list of running processes fails
     */
    public static List getRunningProcesses() {
        List processes = new ArrayList<>();

        try {
            Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(System.getenv("windir") + "\\system32\\" + "tasklist.exe");
            BufferedReader input = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));
            String line;
            int i = 0;
            while ((line = input.readLine()) != null) {
                if (!line.isEmpty()) {
                    String process = line.split(" ")[0];
                    if (process.contains("exe")) {
                        processes.add(process);
                    }
                }
            }
        } catch (IOException e) {
            throw new RuntimeException("Could not retrieve the list of running processes from the OS");
        }

        return processes;
    }

    /**
     * 
     * @param processName the name of the process, for example "explorer.exe"
     * @return true if the process is currently running
     * @throws RuntimeException if the request sent to the OS to get the list of running processes fails
     */
    public static boolean isProcessRunning(String processName) {
        List processes = getRunningProcesses();
        return processes.contains(processName);
    }
}