ThreadLocal in Java had been introduced on JDK 1.2 but was later generified in JDK 1.5 to introduce type safety on ThreadLocal variable. ThreadLocal can be associated with Thread scope, all the code which is executed by Thread has access to ThreadLocal variables but two thread can not see each others ThreadLocal variable. Each thread holds an exclusive copy of ThreadLocal variable which becomes eligible to Garbage collection after thread finished or died, normally or due to any Exception, Given those ThreadLocal variable doesn't have any other live references. ThreadLocal variables in Java are generally private static fields in Classes and maintain its state inside Thread.

阅读更多:Java示例程序和教程中的ThreadLocal

可以使用threadlocal变量的两个用例- 1-当我们需要将状态与线程关联时(例如，用户ID或事务ID)。这通常发生在web应用程序中，每个发送到servlet的请求都有一个与之关联的唯一transactionID。

// This class will provide a thread local variable which
// will provide a unique ID for each thread
class ThreadId {
    // Atomic integer containing the next thread ID to be assigned
    private static final AtomicInteger nextId = new AtomicInteger(0);

    // Thread local variable containing each thread's ID
    private static final ThreadLocal<Integer> threadId =
        ThreadLocal.<Integer>withInitial(()-> {return nextId.getAndIncrement();});

    // Returns the current thread's unique ID, assigning it if necessary
    public static int get() {
        return threadId.get();
    }
}

注意，这里的withInitial方法是使用lambda表达式实现的。 2-另一个用例是当我们想要一个线程安全的实例时，我们不想使用同步，因为同步的性能成本更高。其中一种情况是使用SimpleDateFormat。由于SimpleDateFormat不是线程安全的，所以我们必须提供机制使其线程安全。

public class ThreadLocalDemo1 implements Runnable {
    // threadlocal variable is created
    private static final ThreadLocal<SimpleDateFormat> dateFormat = new ThreadLocal<SimpleDateFormat>(){
        @Override
        protected SimpleDateFormat initialValue(){
            System.out.println("Initializing SimpleDateFormat for - " + Thread.currentThread().getName() );
            return new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");
        }
    };

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        ThreadLocalDemo1 td = new ThreadLocalDemo1();
        // Two threads are created
        Thread t1 = new Thread(td, "Thread-1");
        Thread t2 = new Thread(td, "Thread-2");
        t1.start();
        t2.start();
    }

    @Override
    public void run() {
        System.out.println("Thread run execution started for " + Thread.currentThread().getName());
        System.out.println("Date formatter pattern is  " + dateFormat.get().toPattern());
        System.out.println("Formatted date is " + dateFormat.get().format(new Date()));
    } 

}

Nothing really new here, but I discovered today that ThreadLocal is very useful when using Bean Validation in a web application. Validation messages are localized, but by default use Locale.getDefault(). You can configure the Validator with a different MessageInterpolator, but there's no way to specify the Locale when you call validate. So you could create a static ThreadLocal<Locale> (or better yet, a general container with other things you might need to be ThreadLocal and then have your custom MessageInterpolator pick the Locale from that. Next step is to write a ServletFilter which uses a session value or request.getLocale() to pick the locale and store it in your ThreadLocal reference.

[参考]ThreadLocal无法解决共享对象的更新问题。建议使用staticThreadLocal对象，该对象由同一线程中的所有操作共享。 [必选]remove()方法必须由ThreadLocal变量实现，特别是在使用经常重用线程的线程池时。否则，可能会影响后续的业务逻辑，并导致意想不到的问题，如内存泄漏。

自Java 8发布以来，有更多的声明性方法来初始化ThreadLocal:

ThreadLocal<String> local = ThreadLocal.withInitial(() -> "init value");

在Java 8发布之前，你必须做以下事情:

ThreadLocal<String> local = new ThreadLocal<String>(){
    @Override
    protected String initialValue() {
        return "init value";
    }
};

此外，如果用于ThreadLocal的类的实例化方法(构造函数，工厂方法)不接受任何参数，您可以简单地使用方法引用(在Java 8中引入):

class NotThreadSafe {
    // no parameters
    public NotThreadSafe(){}
}
    
ThreadLocal<NotThreadSafe> container = ThreadLocal.withInitial(NotThreadSafe::new);

注意: 计算是惰性的，因为你传递的java.util.function.Supplier lambda只在调用ThreadLocal#get但value之前没有计算时才会计算。

在多线程代码中使用类似SimpleDateFormat的类助手有三种场景，其中最好的一种是使用ThreadLocal

场景

1-通过锁或同步机制使用类似的共享对象，使应用程序变慢

线程池操作场景

2-在方法中作为局部对象使用

在线程池中，在这个场景中，如果我们有4个线程每个线程有1000个任务时间，那么我们有 创建了4000 SimpleDateFormat对象，并等待GC删除它们

3-使用ThreadLocal

在线程池中，如果我们有4个线程，我们给每个线程一个SimpleDateFormat实例 我们有4个线程，4个SimpleDateFormat对象。

不需要锁机制和对象的创建和销毁。(良好的时间复杂度和空间复杂度)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjMe9aecW_A