Is there a way to take an argument in a callable method?

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You can’t pass it as the argument to call() because the method signature doesn’t allow it.

However, you can pass the necessary information as a constructor argument; e.g.

public class DoPing implements Callable<String>{
    private final String ipToPing;

    public DoPing(String ipToPing) {
        this.ipToPing = ipToPing;
    }

    public String call() throws SomeException {
        InetAddress ipAddress = InetAddress.getByName(ipToPing);
        ....
    }
}

(I’ve corrected a couple of egregious code style violations!!)

There are ways to eliminate some of the “boilerplate” coding in the above (see some of the other answers). In this case we are talking about 4 lines of code (in a ~40 line class), so I am not convinced that it is worth the effort. (But hey, it is your code.)

Alternatively, you could:

  • declare DoPing as an inner class (or a lambda) and have it refer to a final ipToPing in the enclosing scope, or

  • add a setIpToPing(String ipToPing) method.

(The last allows a DoPing object to be reused, but the downside is that you will need to synchronize to access it thread-safely.)

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