Your problem is that you misunderstand the purpose of the servlet. It’s intented to act on HTTP requests, nothing more. You want just a background task which runs once on daily basis.
EJB available? Use @Schedule
If your environment happen to support EJB (i.e. a real Java EE server such as WildFly, JBoss, TomEE, Payara, GlassFish, etc), then use @Schedule instead. Here are some examples:
@Singleton
public class BackgroundJobManager {
@Schedule(hour="0", minute="0", second="0", persistent=false)
public void someDailyJob() {
// Do your job here which should run every start of day.
}
@Schedule(hour="*/1", minute="0", second="0", persistent=false)
public void someHourlyJob() {
// Do your job here which should run every hour of day.
}
@Schedule(hour="*", minute="*/15", second="0", persistent=false)
public void someQuarterlyJob() {
// Do your job here which should run every 15 minute of hour.
}
@Schedule(hour="*", minute="*", second="*/5", persistent=false)
public void someFiveSecondelyJob() {
// Do your job here which should run every 5 seconds.
}
}
Yes, that’s really all. The container will automatically pickup and manage it.
EJB unavailable? Use ScheduledExecutorService
If your environment doesn’t support EJB (i.e. you’re not using not a real Java EE server, but a barebones servletcontainer such as Tomcat, Jetty, etc), then use ScheduledExecutorService. This can be initiated by a ServletContextListener. Here’s a kickoff example:
@WebListener
public class BackgroundJobManager implements ServletContextListener {
private ScheduledExecutorService scheduler;
@Override
public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent event) {
scheduler = Executors.newSingleThreadScheduledExecutor();
scheduler.scheduleAtFixedRate(new SomeDailyJob(), 0, 1, TimeUnit.DAYS);
scheduler.scheduleAtFixedRate(new SomeHourlyJob(), 0, 1, TimeUnit.HOURS);
scheduler.scheduleAtFixedRate(new SomeQuarterlyJob(), 0, 15, TimeUnit.MINUTES);
scheduler.scheduleAtFixedRate(new SomeFiveSecondelyJob(), 0, 5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}
@Override
public void contextDestroyed(ServletContextEvent event) {
scheduler.shutdownNow();
}
}
Where the job classes look like this:
public class SomeDailyJob implements Runnable {
@Override
public void run() {
// Do your daily job here.
}
}
public class SomeHourlyJob implements Runnable {
@Override
public void run() {
// Do your hourly job here.
}
}
public class SomeQuarterlyJob implements Runnable {
@Override
public void run() {
// Do your quarterly job here.
}
}
public class SomeFiveSecondelyJob implements Runnable {
@Override
public void run() {
// Do your quarterly job here.
}
}
Do not ever think about using java.util.Timer/java.lang.Thread in a Java EE / Servlet based environment
Last but not least, never directly use java.util.Timer and/or java.lang.Thread in Java EE. This is recipe for trouble. An elaborate explanation can be found in this JSF-related answer on the same question: Spawning threads in a JSF managed bean for scheduled tasks using a timer.