Java Attach Api demo

This is a quick demo of Java Attach Api . Jvm comes instrumented with many very useful monitoring jmx beans. In this example, given the vm id(that can be quickly obtained using jps command, in fact attach api can be used to list all the jvm processes running too), We get a proxy instance of ThreadMXBean and print the count of live threads.

import java.lang.management.ManagementFactory;
import java.lang.management.ThreadMXBean;

import javax.management.MBeanServerConnection;
import javax.management.ObjectInstance;
import javax.management.ObjectName;
import javax.management.remote.JMXConnector;
import javax.management.remote.JMXConnectorFactory;
import javax.management.remote.JMXServiceURL;

import com.sun.tools.attach.VirtualMachine;

/**
 * This example demonstrates the usage of java attach api to connect to a jvm
 * running locally, gets handle to ThreadMXBean proxy and prints the count
 * of live threads.
 * You have to add $(jdk-home)/lib/tools.jar in your class path to compile/run
 * this code.
 *
 * @author Himanshu Gupta
 */
public class JmxWithAttachApiDemo {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        String vmid = args[0];
        VirtualMachine vm = null;
        try {
            vm = VirtualMachine.attach(vmid);
        } catch(Exception e) {
            System.out.println("Failed: could not find/attach vm with id: " + vmid);
            e.printStackTrace();
            System.exit(1);
        }
        
        JMXConnector jmxConn = null;
        try {
            String connectorAddress = vm.getAgentProperties()
                    .getProperty("com.sun.management.jmxremote.localConnectorAddress");
            if(connectorAddress == null) {
                System.out.println("Failed: jmx agent does not seem to be running.");
                System.exit(2);
            }
            
            JMXServiceURL url = new JMXServiceURL(connectorAddress);
            jmxConn = JMXConnectorFactory.connect(url);
            
            MBeanServerConnection mbs = jmxConn.getMBeanServerConnection();
            if(mbs == null) {
                System.out.println("Failed: could not get mbean server connection.");
                System.exit(3);
            }
    
            ObjectName on = new ObjectName("java.lang:type=Threading");
            ObjectInstance oi = mbs.getObjectInstance(on);
            ThreadMXBean bean = ManagementFactory.newPlatformMXBeanProxy(mbs,
                    "java.lang:type=Threading", ThreadMXBean.class);
            if(bean == null) {
                System.out.println("Failed: could not get threading mbean.");
                System.exit(4);
            }
            
            System.out.println("Number of live threads = " + bean.getThreadCount());
            System.exit(0);
        } finally {
            if(vm != null)
                vm.detach();
            
            if(jmxConn != null)
                jmxConn.close();
        }
    }
}

This can be used to build jvm monitoring tools and indeed,   JConsole and JVisualVM work this way.



References:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/tools/
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/management/toc.html