Producer Consumer in java multithreaded

Question

The major problem is that the synchronized block in your Producer is too wide. It is never letting the Consumer acquire the lock

Start by narrowing the scope, for example...

while (true) {
    for (int i = 1; i <= size; i++) {
        try {
            String dataitem = Thread.currentThread().getId() + "_" + i;
            boolean bool = b.insert(dataitem);
            //b.notifyAll();
            if (bool) {
                System.out.println("Successfully inserted " + dataitem);
            }
            synchronized (b) {
                b.notifyAll();
            }
            Thread.sleep(2000);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

You may also consider synchronizing the ing insert and delete methods themselves. I personally would be tempted to use a internal lock, but you could simply synchronize the methods themselves, for example...

public synchronized boolean insert(String dataitem) {...}

public synchronized String delete() {...}

As it stands, your Consumer will only ever read a single value from the buffer, but I'll let you figure that one out ;)

As a side note, I might put the wait and notify functionality directly within the Buffer, so that whenever you try and delete a value, it will wait, within the delete method for the Buffer to be not empty and allow the insert method to make the notifications itself...but that's me ;)

Equally, I might consider blocking the insert method until there is more room, but that will come down to how you want to implement it :P

Updated

Very basically, this will start giving the results you are looking for...

public class ProducerConsumer {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        new ProducerConsumer();
    }

    public ProducerConsumer() {
        int size = 5;

        Buffer b = new Buffer(size);

        Thread prod = new Thread(new Producer(b, size));
        Thread cons = new Thread(new Consumer(b, size));

        prod.start();
        cons.start();
    }

    public class Buffer {

        String a[];
        int front, rear;

        public Buffer(int size) {
            a = new String[size];
            front = rear = -1;
        }

        public synchronized boolean insert(String dataitem) {
            int p;
            p = (rear + 1) % a.length;

            if (p == front) {
                System.out.println("Buffer full");
                return false;
            } else {
                rear = p;
                a[rear] = dataitem;
                if (front == -1) {
                    front = 0;
                }
                return true;
            }
        }

        public boolean empty() {
            return front == -1;
        }

        public synchronized String delete() {
            String result = a[front];
            if (front == rear) {
                front = rear = -1;
            } else {
                front = (front + 1) % a.length;
            }
            return result;
        }

        public void display() {
            if (front == -1) {
                System.out.println("Buffer empty");
            } else {
                System.out.println("Buffer elements are:");
                int i = front;

                while (i != rear) {
                    System.out.println(a[i]);
                    i = (i + 1) % a.length;
                }
                System.out.println(a[i]);
            }
        }

    }

    class Producer extends Thread {

        Buffer b;
        int size;

        public Producer(Buffer b, int size) {
            this.b = b;
            this.size = size;
        }

        public void run() {
            int i = 0;
            while (true) {
                try {
                    String dataitem = Thread.currentThread().getId() + "_" + ++i;
                    boolean bool = b.insert(dataitem);
                    if (bool) {
                        System.out.println("Successfully inserted " + dataitem);
                    }
                    synchronized (b) {
                        b.notifyAll();
                    }
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }

            }
        }
    }

    class Consumer extends Thread {

        Buffer b;
        int size;

        public Consumer(Buffer b, int size) {
            this.b = b;
            this.size = size;
        }

        public void run() {

            while (true) {

                while (b.empty()) {
                    synchronized (b) {
                        try {
                            System.out.println("Buffer empty");
                            b.wait();
                        } catch (Exception e) {
                            e.printStackTrace();
                        }
                    }
                }

                String dataitem = null;
                synchronized (b) {
                    dataitem = b.delete();
                }
                    System.out.println("Removed " + dataitem);
            }
        }
    }
}