1. Java Concurrency Utilities - java.util.concurrent
2. Java BlockingQueue
3. ArrayBlockingQueue
4. DelayQueue
5. LinkedBlockingQueue
6. PriorityBlockingQueue
7. SynchronousQueue
8. BlockingDeque
9. LinkedBlockingDeque
10. ConcurrentMap
11. ConcurrentNavigableMap
12. CountDownLatch
13. CyclicBarrier
14. Exchanger
15. Semaphore
16. Java ExecutorService
17. Java Callable
18. Java Future
19. ThreadPoolExecutor
20. ScheduledExecutorService
21. Java ForkJoinPool
22. Java Lock
23. ReadWriteLock
24. AtomicBoolean
25. AtomicInteger
26. AtomicLong
27. AtomicReference
28. AtomicStampedReference
29. AtomicIntegerArray
30. AtomicLongArray
31. AtomicReferenceArray

• Creating an AtomicBoolean
• Getting the AtomicBoolean's Value
• Setting the AtomicBoolean's Value
• Swapping the AtomicBoolean's Value
• Compare and Set AtomicBoolean's Value

The AtomicBoolean class provides you with a boolean variable which can be read and written atomically, and which also contains advanced atomic operations like compareAndSet(). The AtomicBoolean class is located in the java.util.concurrent.atomic package, so the full class name is java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicBoolean . This text describes the version of AtomicBoolean found in Java 8, but the first version was added in Java 5.

The reasoning behind the AtomicBoolean design is explained in my Java Concurrency tutorial in the text about Compare and Swap.

Creating an AtomicBoolean

You create an AtomicBoolean like this:

AtomicBoolean atomicBoolean = new AtomicBoolean();

This example creates a new AtomicBoolean with the value false;

If you need to set an explicit initial value for the AtomicBoolean instance, you can pass the initial value to the AtomicBoolean constructor like this:

AtomicBoolean atomicBoolean = new AtomicBoolean(true);

Getting the AtomicBoolean's Value

You can get the value of an AtomicBoolean using the get() method. Here is an example:

AtomicBoolean atomicBoolean = new AtomicBoolean(true);

boolean value = atomicBoolean.get();

After executing this code the value variable will contain the value true.

Setting the AtomicBoolean's Value

You can set the value of an AtomicBoolean using the set() method. Here is an example:

AtomicBoolean atomicBoolean = new AtomicBoolean(true);

atomicBoolean.set(false);

After executing this code the AtomicBoolean variable will contain the value false.

Swapping the AtomicBoolean's Value

You can swap the value of an AtomicBoolean using the getAndSet() method. The getAndSet() method returns the AtomicBoolean's current value, and sets a new value for it. Here is an example:

AtomicBoolean atomicBoolean = new AtomicBoolean(true);

boolean oldValue = atomicBoolean.getAndSet(false);

After executing this code the oldValue variable will contain the value true, and the AtomicBoolean instance will contain the value false. The code effectively swaps the value false for the AtomicBoolean's current value which is true.

Compare and Set AtomicBoolean's Value

The method compareAndSet() allows you to compare the current value of the AtomicBoolean to an expected value, and if current value is equal to the expected value, a new value can be set on the AtomicBoolean. The compareAndSet() method is atomic, so only a single thread can execute it at the same time. Thus, the compareAndSet() method can be used to implemented simple synchronizers like locks.

Here is a compareAndSet() example:

AtomicBoolean atomicBoolean = new AtomicBoolean(true);

boolean expectedValue = true;
boolean newValue      = false;

boolean wasNewValueSet = atomicBoolean.compareAndSet(
    expectedValue, newValue);

This example compares the current value of the AtomicBoolean to true and if the two values are equal, sets the new value of the AtomicBoolean to false .