jade.core.behaviours

Class TickerBehaviour

java.lang.Object

jade.core.behaviours.Behaviour

jade.core.behaviours.SimpleBehaviour

jade.core.behaviours.TickerBehaviour

All Implemented Interfaces:

java.io.Serializable

public abstract class TickerBehaviour
extends SimpleBehaviour

This abstract class implements a Behaviour that periodically executes a user-defined piece of code. The user is expected to extend this class re-defining the method onTick() and including the piece of code that must be periodically executed into it.

Author:

Giovanni Caire - TILAB

See Also:

Serialized Form

Field Summary

Fields inherited from class jade.core.behaviours.Behaviour

myAgent

Constructor Summary

Constructors

Constructor and Description
TickerBehaviour(Agent a, long period) Construct a TickerBehaviour that call its onTick() method every period ms.

Method Summary

Modifier and Type	Method and Description
void	action() Runs the behaviour.
boolean	done() Check if this behaviour is done.
protected long	getPeriod()
int	getTickCount() Retrieve how many ticks were done (i.e. how many times this behaviour was executed) since the last reset.
void	onStart() This method is just an empty placeholders for subclasses.
protected abstract void	onTick() This method is invoked periodically with the period defined in the constructor.
void	reset() This method must be called to reset the behaviour and starts again
void	reset(long period) This method must be called to reset the behaviour and starts again
void	setFixedPeriod(boolean fixedPeriod) Turn on/off the "fixed period" mode.
void	stop() Make this TickerBehaviour terminate.

Methods inherited from class jade.core.behaviours.Behaviour

block, block, getAgent, getBehaviourName, getDataStore, getParent, isRunnable, onEnd, restart, root, setAgent, setBehaviourName, setDataStore

Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object

clone, equals, finalize, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, toString, wait, wait, wait

Constructor Detail

TickerBehaviour

public TickerBehaviour(Agent a,
                       long period)

Construct a TickerBehaviour that call its onTick() method every period ms.

Parameters:

a - is the pointer to the agent

period - the tick period in ms

Method Detail

onStart

public void onStart()

Description copied from class: Behaviour

This method is just an empty placeholders for subclasses. It is executed just once before starting behaviour execution. Therefore, it acts as a prolog to the task represented by this Behaviour.

Overrides:

onStart in class Behaviour

action

public final void action()

Description copied from class: Behaviour

Runs the behaviour. This abstract method must be implemented by Behavioursubclasses to perform ordinary behaviour duty. An agent schedules its behaviours calling their action() method; since all the behaviours belonging to the same agent are scheduled cooperatively, this method must not enter in an endless loop and should return as soon as possible to preserve agent responsiveness. To split a long and slow task into smaller section, recursive behaviour aggregation may be used.

Specified by:

action in class Behaviour

See Also:

CompositeBehaviour

done

public final boolean done()

Description copied from class: Behaviour

Check if this behaviour is done. The agent scheduler calls this method to see whether a Behaviour still need to be run or it has completed its task. Concrete behaviours must implement this method to return their completion state. Finished behaviours are removed from the scheduling queue, while others are kept within to be run again when their turn comes again.

Specified by:

done in class Behaviour

Returns:

true if the behaviour has completely executed.

onTick

protected abstract void onTick()

This method is invoked periodically with the period defined in the constructor. Subclasses are expected to define this method specifying the action that must be performed at every tick.

setFixedPeriod

public void setFixedPeriod(boolean fixedPeriod)

Turn on/off the "fixed period" mode. Given a period P, when fixed period mode is off (default), this behaviour will wait for P milliseconds from the end of the n-th execution of the onTick() method to the beginning of the n+1-th execution. When fixed period is on, this behaviour will execute the onTick() method exactly every P milliseconds.

Parameters:

fixedPeriod - A boolean value indicating whether the fixed period mode must be turned on or off.

reset

public void reset(long period)

This method must be called to reset the behaviour and starts again

Parameters:

period - the new tick time

reset

public void reset()

This method must be called to reset the behaviour and starts again

Overrides:

reset in class SimpleBehaviour

Parameters:

timeout - indicates in how many milliseconds from now the behaviour must be waken up again.

stop

public void stop()

Make this TickerBehaviour terminate. Calling stop() has the same effect as removing this TickerBehaviour, but is Thread safe

getTickCount

public final int getTickCount()

Retrieve how many ticks were done (i.e. how many times this behaviour was executed) since the last reset.

Returns:

The number of ticks since the last reset

getPeriod

protected long getPeriod()