In my WPF program it took huge processing time and freezing for long time.
so I decided to use background worker and process it in background.
but it does not work. through debug, the program stop at Render3D(). It does not throw exception. Its like when you put return.
In other word it does nothing after reaching Render3D() and will just return.
(I don't say it will return Because im not sure but the behavior is same as return)
private readonly BackgroundWorker backgroundWorker = new BackgroundWorker();
private AssetDeclaration _assetDeclaration = new AssetDeclaration();
public MainWindow()
{
backgroundWorker.DoWork += backgroundWorker1_DoWork;
backgroundWorker.ProgressChanged += backgroundWorker1_ProgressChanged;
backgroundWorker.RunWorkerCompleted += backgroundWorker1_RunWorkerCompleted;
InitializeComponent();
}
private void backgroundWorker1_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
for (int i = 1; i <= 1000; i++)
{
if (!((BackgroundWorker)sender).CancellationPending)
{
Render3D(); // will return at this point. (why?) or waiting for something to start?
((BackgroundWorker)sender).ReportProgress(i);
}
else
{
e.Cancel = true;
break;
}
}
}
private void backgroundWorker1_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
{
MessageBox.Show("Done!");//will show message box instant.
}
private void backgroundWorker1_ProgressChanged(object sender, ProgressChangedEventArgs e)
{
ProgressBar1.Value = e.ProgressPercentage;
}
private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
//...Some work here before starting Hard job!
//...From now i want to start heavy process in background.
//...with report to progress bar at same time.
backgroundWorker.RunWorkerAsync(100);
}
Render3D() works fine without Background processing but will freeze for some time.
Render3D() is in Partial class of MainWindow .because there are lots of methods so i decided to separate them.
Also how can I use ReportProgress outside backgroundWorker1_DoWork . for example in Render3D().
Last thing : i want to know how to show the user how much of process is done.
Solved!:
The problem was because i set Viewport3D inside Render3D()
I separated it from Render3D and problem got fixed. thanks to Henk Holterman for the right answer.
It seems some tasks cant be done in another Thread. with the Error report i find out that the invalid task is setting Viewport3D properties.
this tasks must be done in Main thread.
below is invalid Code that made background worker stop functioning.
DefineCamera();
Viewport.Children.Add(model); // Must be run in Main thread.
And this Part.
private void DefineCamera()
{
PerspectiveCamera camera = new PerspectiveCamera
{
FieldOfView = 60
};
PositionCamera(camera);
Viewport.Camera = camera; // Must be run in Main thread.
}
First of all, you had trouble finding the error.
... the program stop at Render3D(). It does not throw exception. Its like when you put return.
What actually happened was that an exception was thrown by your method and was captured by the Backgroundworker. It is transferred to the Completed event but you do have to act on it there.
private void worker_Completed(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
{
// check error, check cancel, then use result
if (e.Error != null)
{
// handle the error
}
else if (e.Cancelled)
{
// handle cancellation
}
else
{
// use the result(s) on the UI thread
}
// general cleanup
}
Failing to look at either e.Error or e.Result is the same as having an empty catch{} block in your program.
And with error handling in place we then have
oh yes it shown Error. System.InvalidOperationException the calling thread cannot access this object because a different thread owns it
This indicates that your Render3D() still interacts with the GUI somewhere.
The basic advice is to separate all the calculation (and I/O, database) work from the UI work. You can run the CPU bound and I/O bound cod in a thread but the GUI is single threaded, you can only interact with it from the main Thread.
In the world of WPF, unlike Windows Forms that you were used to, you should consider Dispatcher. To do this, you have to import System.Windows.Threading
private void ThreadTask()
{
Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5));
this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.Normal,
(ThreadStart)delegate()
{
//Do some heavy task here...
});
}
Quick Update
In order to run the thread from a button click or whatever, any function, add this line of code:
Thread thread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(ThreadTask));
thread.Start();
This line of code is equivalent to BackgroundWorker.RunWorkerAsync();
I would highly recommend using async/await. This feature was introduced in .NET 4.5, and is used to shift work off the main WPF GUI thread to make the application fast and responsive.
Essentially, the rule is to push any calculations which do not interact with GUI onto a background thread using a combination of Task.Run and async/await. Together with Dispatcher.Invoke, you don't really need anything else.
For example, a slow data call that might fetch data from the database could be pushed onto a background thread, so the application does freeze while it waits for the SQL to execute.
I've used this to make the applications that I write fast, responsive and snappy.
I've found this topic, How to suspend a thread by its name from the main thread?, but no satisfactory answer for what I'm trying to achieve.
I'm using threading and the WatiN class to perform events on two browsers in the same windows form at the same time.
I would like to, from the main UI thread, press a pause button available within one of the browsers that, through deriving the control name of the browser the pause button was pressed on, use that' name to figure out which sub-thread is associated with it's running logic, and pause that running logic until the play button is pressed.
Now today, we are so accomplished in terms of code and technology, there should be a way to do this.
What do you think?
Researching Ideas:
Pragmatically create ManualResetEvent and name it, use the UI pause button to grab the open browser control name, which is similiarly named after the child thread and browser control name (such a browser_5 & thread_5) to somehow target in on the MRE in the child thread, and close the gate to pause the logic. (But can this be done on child thread from the main UI thread?)
Don't use thread.Suspend
At first blush, it seems you could use thread.Suspend() to pause it and thread.Resume() to unpause it. But this is not a very good idea. See the MSDN article for thread.Suspend for why you should never use it unless you intend to terminate the AppDomain for that thread.
Do not use the Suspend and Resume methods to synchronize the activities of threads. You have no way of knowing what code a thread is executing when you suspend it. If you suspend a thread while it holds locks during a security permission evaluation, other threads in the AppDomain might be blocked. If you suspend a thread while it is executing a class constructor, other threads in the AppDomain that attempt to use that class are blocked. Deadlocks can occur very easily.
A sub-loop would work, but isn't perfect
It isn't the best option, but you could use a similar technique to the one described in that question you linked.
Instead of exiting the loop when a stop button is pressed, have it enter and wait inside a sub-loop while paused. Do a Thread.Sleep in that sub-loop to keep the CPU from pegging.
This isn't the most efficient code possible, because it keeps the thread running, and hangs for another 100ms when resuming.
public class YourForm : Form
{
private volatile bool _pause = false;
private void StartButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
var thread = new Thread(
() =>
{
while (...)
{
// Periodically poll the _pause flag.
while (_pause)
{
// Now that we're paused, wait until we're unpaused
// before proceeding further in the outer loop
Thread.Sleep(100);
}
// Todo: The rest of the processing here
}
});
thread.Start();
}
private void PauseButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
_pause = !_pause; // Toggle
}
}
Use thread synchronization
The best option is to use one of the various thread synchronization structures, like ManualResetEvent. Pausing threads is exactly what they're designed for. They're very efficient because they are implemented with a mutex.
public class YourForm : Form
{
private volatile bool _pause = false;
private static ManualResetEvent mre = new ManualResetEvent(true);
private void StartButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
var thread = new Thread(ThreadImplementation);
thread.Start();
}
private void PauseButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
_pause = !_pause;
if(_pause)
{
mre.Reset();
}
else
{
mre.Set();
}
}
private void ThreadImplementation()
{
while (...)
{
// Periodically wait on the event
mre.WaitOne();
// Todo: The rest of the processing here
}
}
}
Your ManualResetEvent idea is exactly correct.
Make the child threads WaitOne() on the event between each step.
To pause the request, call Reset(); to unpause, call Set().
If the event is set, WaitOne() will return immediately.
This will be much more efficient than repeated sleeps.
I suspect that a ManualResetEventSlim would be slightly faster.
Suppose you have a search textbox and have a search algorithm attached to the TextChanged event, that runs with a BackgroundWorker. If there comes a new character in the textbox, i need to cancel the previous search and run it again.
I tried using events in between the main thread and the bgw, from this previous question, but I still get the error "currently busy and cannot run multiple tasks concurrently"
BackgroundWorker bgw_Search = new BackgroundWorker();
bgw_Search.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(bgw_Search_DoWork);
private AutoResetEvent _resetEvent = new AutoResetEvent(false);
private void txtSearch_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
SearchWithBgw();
}
private void SearchWithBgw()
{
// cancel previous search
if (bgw_Search.IsBusy)
{
bgw_Search.CancelAsync();
// wait for the bgw to finish, so it can be reused.
_resetEvent.WaitOne(); // will block until _resetEvent.Set() call made
}
// start new search
bgw_Search.RunWorkerAsync(); // error "cannot run multiple tasks concurrently"
}
void bgw_Search_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
Search(txtSearch.Text, e);
}
private void Search(string aQuery, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
int i = 1;
while (i < 3) // simulating search processing...
{
Thread.Sleep(1000);
i++;
if (bgw_Search.CancellationPending)
{
_resetEvent.Set(); // signal that worker is done
e.Cancel = true;
return;
}
}
}
EDIT To reflect answers. Don´t reuse the BackgroundWorker, create a new one:
private void SearchWithBgw()
{
if (bgw_Search.IsBusy)
{
bgw_Search.CancelAsync();
_resetEvent.WaitOne(); // will block until _resetEvent.Set() call made
bgw_Search = new BackgroundWorker();
bgw_Search.WorkerSupportsCancellation = true;
bgw_Search.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(bgw_Search_DoWork);
}
bgw_Search.RunWorkerAsync();
}
When the _resetEvent.WaitOne() call completes, the worker thread isn't actually done. It is busy returning from DoWork() and waiting for an opportunity to run the RunWorkerCompleted event, if any. That takes time.
There is no reliable way to ensure the BGW is completed in a synchronous way. Blocking on IsBusy or waiting for the RunWorkerCompleted event to run is going to cause deadlock. If you really want to use only one bgw then you'll have to queue the requests. Or just don't sweat the small stuff and allocate another bgw. They cost very little.
Create a new background worker if the old one exists.
private void SearchWithBgw()
{
// cancel previous search
if (bgw_Search.IsBusy)
{
bgw_Search.CancelAsync();
// wait for the bgw to finish, so it can be reused.
_resetEvent.WaitOne(); // will block until _resetEvent.Set() call made
BackgroundWorker bgw_Search = new BackgroundWorker();
bgw_Search.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(bgw_Search_DoWork);
}
// start new search
bgw_Search.RunWorkerAsync(); // error "cannot run multiple tasks concurrently"
}
Also I know you put fake code in, but you want to make sure you set _resetEvent when the code completes normally too.
Do not reuse a Backgroundworker. It is a cheap resource, it is not a Thread.
make sure your Bgw code stops, yours looks OK. The Bgw will release the Thread to the pool.
but in the mean time, create a new Task/Bgw for a new job.
You may want to unsubscribe your Completed event from the old Bgw.
I think you should consider not cancelling the background worker.
If you cancel requests and the user types faster than your server returns queries, he will not see suggestions until he is finished typing.
In interactive scenarios like this, It could be better to show responses that run behind with what the user's typing. Your user will know he can stop typing if the word he has in mind is your suggestions list.
This will be also better for your server when it is busy, because instead of many cancelled requests, who will cost something but that are ultimately not shown, there will be fewer requests whose response you actually use.
I ran into similar issues with (3d) rendering applications, where the beginner's mistake is to cancel and rerender on every mousemove. This lead to a lot of computation and little interactive feedback.
I'm trying to load loadingForm like below code. But it doesn't work, the loadingForm doesn't disappear, the event RunWorkerCompleted doesn't get called.
And also, I need to call loadingForm and backgroundWorker multiple times, so how do I completely dispose the loadingForm and the backgroundWorker after each call?
I think that there're many things wrong in my code but I don't know how to fix it. Could you show me how to solve my problem and point out where I need to fix? Thanks a lot in advance.
public partial class loginForm : Form
{
//....
private loadingForm lf;
private void backgroundWorker1_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
lf.Show();
While (backgroundWorker1.isBusy)
Application.DoEvents();
}
private void backgroundWorker1_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
lf.Close();
}
private void connect()
{
//....
Thread mainThread = new Thread(ThreadStart(listentoServer));
mainThread.Start();
}
private void listentoServer()
{
//....
lf = new loadingForm();
backgroundWorker1.RunWorkerAsync();
//....
backgroundWorker1.CancelAsync();
//....
}
}
There's a lot of things wrong with your code. If you can, try to take a step back and describe what exactly you want to do.
BackgroundWorker uses the Event-based Asynchronous Pattern (EAP). As such, it requires a thread context in which to live. UI threads satisfy this requirement, but manually-created Thread instances do not (unless you install one or make the instance a secondary UI thread).
Similarly, UI components bind to a particular thread. They require an STA thread that does message pumping (e.g., Application.DoEvents).
It looks to me like you're creating a manual Thread and then creating UI components from that thread (so you know that the thread should be STA and include a message pumping loop, neither of which are in your code). Then that thread starts a BGW which does message pumping.
It's not clear what you're trying to accomplish here - maybe displaying a dialog in a separate thread?
Multiple UI threads in a WinForms app is not an officially supported scenario AFAIK, though some people have gotten it working. I've never seen a need for it, though.
According to what you have shown (which is admittedly incomplete, so this may not be the problem), you are not hooking up your event to the backgroundWorker_DoWork and backgroundWorker_RunWorkerCompleted event handlers. Somewhere (after you instantiate your backgroundWorker), you should have this:
backgroundWorker.DoWork += new EventHandler(backgroundWorker_DoWork);
backgroundWorker.RunWorkerCompleted += new EventHandler(backgroundWorker_RunWorkerCompleted);
As a disclaimer, this was written by hand, so the event names or EventHandler types may be incorrect.
i really don't know how to fix your code definitively, or if your code even works the way you have it, i can only give you the following guidance.
use CancellationPending property of background worker, not the IsBusy property
when working with windows forms and threaded code, always use the Invoke/BeginInvoke methods to make sure you marshal your call back to the thread that the control originated from.
I want to display a progress bar while doing some work, but that would hang the UI and the progress bar won't update.
I have a WinForm ProgressForm with a ProgressBar that will continue indefinitely in a marquee fashion.
using(ProgressForm p = new ProgressForm(this))
{
//Do Some Work
}
Now there are many ways to solve the issue, like using BeginInvoke, wait for the task to complete and call EndInvoke. Or using the BackgroundWorker or Threads.
I am having some issues with the EndInvoke, though that's not the question. The question is which is the best and the simplest way you use to handle such situations, where you have to show the user that the program is working and not unresponsive, and how do you handle that with simplest code possible that is efficient and won't leak, and can update the GUI.
Like BackgroundWorker needs to have multiple functions, declare member variables, etc. Also you need to then hold a reference to the ProgressBar Form and dispose of it.
Edit: BackgroundWorker is not the answer because it may be that I don't get the progress notification, which means there would be no call to ProgressChanged as the DoWork is a single call to an external function, but I need to keep call the Application.DoEvents(); for the progress bar to keep rotating.
The bounty is for the best code solution for this problem. I just need to call Application.DoEvents() so that the Marque progress bar will work, while the worker function works in the Main thread, and it doesn't return any progress notification. I never needed .NET magic code to report progress automatically, I just needed a better solution than :
Action<String, String> exec = DoSomethingLongAndNotReturnAnyNotification;
IAsyncResult result = exec.BeginInvoke(path, parameters, null, null);
while (!result.IsCompleted)
{
Application.DoEvents();
}
exec.EndInvoke(result);
that keeps the progress bar alive (means not freezing but refreshes the marque)
It seems to me that you are operating on at least one false assumption.
1. You don't need to raise the ProgressChanged event to have a responsive UI
In your question you say this:
BackgroundWorker is not the answer
because it may be that I don't get the
progress notification, which means
there would be no call to
ProgressChanged as the DoWork is a
single call to an external function .
. .
Actually, it does not matter whether you call the ProgressChanged event or not. The whole purpose of that event is to temporarily transfer control back to the GUI thread to make an update that somehow reflects the progress of the work being done by the BackgroundWorker. If you are simply displaying a marquee progress bar, it would actually be pointless to raise the ProgressChanged event at all. The progress bar will continue rotating as long as it is displayed because the BackgroundWorker is doing its work on a separate thread from the GUI.
(On a side note, DoWork is an event, which means that it is not just "a single call to an external function"; you can add as many handlers as you like; and each of those handlers can contain as many function calls as it likes.)
2. You don't need to call Application.DoEvents to have a responsive UI
To me it sounds like you believe that the only way for the GUI to update is by calling Application.DoEvents:
I need to keep call the
Application.DoEvents(); for the
progress bar to keep rotating.
This is not true in a multithreaded scenario; if you use a BackgroundWorker, the GUI will continue to be responsive (on its own thread) while the BackgroundWorker does whatever has been attached to its DoWork event. Below is a simple example of how this might work for you.
private void ShowProgressFormWhileBackgroundWorkerRuns() {
// this is your presumably long-running method
Action<string, string> exec = DoSomethingLongAndNotReturnAnyNotification;
ProgressForm p = new ProgressForm(this);
BackgroundWorker b = new BackgroundWorker();
// set the worker to call your long-running method
b.DoWork += (object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e) => {
exec.Invoke(path, parameters);
};
// set the worker to close your progress form when it's completed
b.RunWorkerCompleted += (object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e) => {
if (p != null && p.Visible) p.Close();
};
// now actually show the form
p.Show();
// this only tells your BackgroundWorker to START working;
// the current (i.e., GUI) thread will immediately continue,
// which means your progress bar will update, the window
// will continue firing button click events and all that
// good stuff
b.RunWorkerAsync();
}
3. You can't run two methods at the same time on the same thread
You say this:
I just need to call
Application.DoEvents() so that the
Marque progress bar will work, while
the worker function works in the Main
thread . . .
What you're asking for is simply not real. The "main" thread for a Windows Forms application is the GUI thread, which, if it's busy with your long-running method, is not providing visual updates. If you believe otherwise, I suspect you misunderstand what BeginInvoke does: it launches a delegate on a separate thread. In fact, the example code you have included in your question to call Application.DoEvents between exec.BeginInvoke and exec.EndInvoke is redundant; you are actually calling Application.DoEvents repeatedly from the GUI thread, which would be updating anyway. (If you found otherwise, I suspect it's because you called exec.EndInvoke right away, which blocked the current thread until the method finished.)
So yes, the answer you're looking for is to use a BackgroundWorker.
You could use BeginInvoke, but instead of calling EndInvoke from the GUI thread (which will block it if the method isn't finished), pass an AsyncCallback parameter to your BeginInvoke call (instead of just passing null), and close the progress form in your callback. Be aware, however, that if you do that, you're going to have to invoke the method that closes the progress form from the GUI thread, since otherwise you'll be trying to close a form, which is a GUI function, from a non-GUI thread. But really, all the pitfalls of using BeginInvoke/EndInvoke have already been dealt with for you with the BackgroundWorker class, even if you think it's ".NET magic code" (to me, it's just an intuitive and useful tool).
For me the easiest way is definitely to use a BackgroundWorker, which is specifically designed for this kind of task. The ProgressChanged event is perfectly fitted to update a progress bar, without worrying about cross-thread calls
There's a load of information about threading with .NET/C# on Stackoverflow, but the article that cleared up windows forms threading for me was our resident oracle, Jon Skeet's "Threading in Windows Forms".
The whole series is worth reading to brush up on your knowledge or learn from scratch.
I'm impatient, just show me some code
As far as "show me the code" goes, below is how I would do it with C# 3.5. The form contains 4 controls:
a textbox
a progressbar
2 buttons: "buttonLongTask" and "buttonAnother"
buttonAnother is there purely to demonstrate that the UI isn't blocked while the count-to-100 task is running.
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
private void buttonLongTask_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Thread thread = new Thread(LongTask);
thread.IsBackground = true;
thread.Start();
}
private void buttonAnother_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
textBox1.Text = "Have you seen this?";
}
private void LongTask()
{
for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
{
Update1(i);
Thread.Sleep(500);
}
}
public void Update1(int i)
{
if (InvokeRequired)
{
this.BeginInvoke(new Action<int>(Update1), new object[] { i });
return;
}
progressBar1.Value = i;
}
}
And another example that BackgroundWorker is the right way to do it...
using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Threading;
using System.Windows.Forms;
namespace SerialSample
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
private BackgroundWorker _BackgroundWorker;
private Random _Random;
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
_ProgressBar.Style = ProgressBarStyle.Marquee;
_ProgressBar.Visible = false;
_Random = new Random();
InitializeBackgroundWorker();
}
private void InitializeBackgroundWorker()
{
_BackgroundWorker = new BackgroundWorker();
_BackgroundWorker.WorkerReportsProgress = true;
_BackgroundWorker.DoWork += (sender, e) => ((MethodInvoker)e.Argument).Invoke();
_BackgroundWorker.ProgressChanged += (sender, e) =>
{
_ProgressBar.Style = ProgressBarStyle.Continuous;
_ProgressBar.Value = e.ProgressPercentage;
};
_BackgroundWorker.RunWorkerCompleted += (sender, e) =>
{
if (_ProgressBar.Style == ProgressBarStyle.Marquee)
{
_ProgressBar.Visible = false;
}
};
}
private void buttonStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
_BackgroundWorker.RunWorkerAsync(new MethodInvoker(() =>
{
_ProgressBar.BeginInvoke(new MethodInvoker(() => _ProgressBar.Visible = true));
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
{
Thread.Sleep(10);
_BackgroundWorker.ReportProgress(i / 10);
}
}));
}
}
}
Indeed you are on the right track. You should use another thread, and you have identified the best ways to do that. The rest is just updating the progress bar. In case you don't want to use BackgroundWorker like others have suggested, there is one trick to keep in mind. The trick is that you cannot update the progress bar from the worker thread because UI can be only manipulated from the UI thread. So you use the Invoke method. It goes something like this (fix the syntax errors yourself, I'm just writing a quick example):
class MyForm: Form
{
private void delegate UpdateDelegate(int Progress);
private void UpdateProgress(int Progress)
{
if ( this.InvokeRequired )
this.Invoke((UpdateDelegate)UpdateProgress, Progress);
else
this.MyProgressBar.Progress = Progress;
}
}
The InvokeRequired property will return true on every thread except the one that owns the form. The Invoke method will call the method on the UI thread, and will block until it completes. If you don't want to block, you can call BeginInvoke instead.
BackgroundWorker is not the answer because it may be that I don't get the progress notification...
What on earth does the fact that you're not getting progress notification have to do with the use of BackgroundWorker? If your long-running task doesn't have a reliable mechanism for reporting its progress, there's no way to reliably report its progress.
The simplest possible way to report progress of a long-running method is to run the method on the UI thread and have it report progress by updating the progress bar and then calling Application.DoEvents(). This will, technically, work. But the UI will be unresponsive between calls to Application.DoEvents(). This is the quick and dirty solution, and as Steve McConnell observes, the problem with quick and dirty solutions is that the bitterness of the dirty remains long after the sweetness of the quick is forgotten.
The next simplest way, as alluded to by another poster, is to implement a modal form that uses a BackgroundWorker to execute the long-running method. This provides a generally better user experience, and it frees you from having to solve the potentially complicated problem of what parts of your UI to leave functional while the long-running task is executing - while the modal form is open, none of the rest of your UI will respond to user actions. This is the quick and clean solution.
But it's still pretty user-hostile. It still locks up the UI while the long-running task is executing; it just does it in a pretty way. To make a user-friendly solution, you need to execute the task on another thread. The easiest way to do that is with a BackgroundWorker.
This approach opens the door to a lot of problems. It won't "leak," whatever that is supposed to mean. But whatever the long-running method is doing, it now has to do it in complete isolation from the pieces of the UI that remain enabled while it's running. And by complete, I mean complete. If the user can click anywhere with a mouse and cause some update to be made to some object that your long-running method ever looks at, you'll have problems. Any object that your long-running method uses which can raise an event is a potential road to misery.
It's that, and not getting BackgroundWorker to work properly, that's going to be the source of all of the pain.
I have to throw the simplest answer out there. You could always just implement the progress bar and have no relationship to anything of actual progress. Just start filling the bar say 1% a second, or 10% a second whatever seems similar to your action and if it fills over to start again.
This will atleast give the user the appearance of processing and make them understand to wait instead of just clicking a button and seeing nothing happen then clicking it more.
Here is another sample code to use BackgroundWorker to update ProgressBar, just add BackgroundWorker and Progressbar to your main form and use below code:
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
Shown += new EventHandler(Form1_Shown);
// To report progress from the background worker we need to set this property
backgroundWorker1.WorkerReportsProgress = true;
// This event will be raised on the worker thread when the worker starts
backgroundWorker1.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(backgroundWorker1_DoWork);
// This event will be raised when we call ReportProgress
backgroundWorker1.ProgressChanged += new ProgressChangedEventHandler(backgroundWorker1_ProgressChanged);
}
void Form1_Shown(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// Start the background worker
backgroundWorker1.RunWorkerAsync();
}
// On worker thread so do our thing!
void backgroundWorker1_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
// Your background task goes here
for (int i = 0; i <= 100; i++)
{
// Report progress to 'UI' thread
backgroundWorker1.ReportProgress(i);
// Simulate long task
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(100);
}
}
// Back on the 'UI' thread so we can update the progress bar
void backgroundWorker1_ProgressChanged(object sender, ProgressChangedEventArgs e)
{
// The progress percentage is a property of e
progressBar1.Value = e.ProgressPercentage;
}
}
refrence:from codeproject
Use the BackgroundWorker component it is designed for exactly this scenario.
You can hook into its progress update events and update your progress bar. The BackgroundWorker class ensures the callbacks are marshalled to the UI thread so you don't need to worry about any of that detail either.
Reading your requirements the simplest way would be to display a mode-less form and use a standard System.Windows.Forms timer to update the progress on the mode-less form. No threads, no possible memory leaks.
As this only uses the one UI thread, you would also need to call Application.DoEvents() at certain points during your main processing to guarantee the progress bar is updated visually.
Re: Your edit.
You need a BackgroundWorker or Thread to do the work, but it must call ReportProgress() periodically to tell the UI thread what it is doing. DotNet can't magically work out how much of the work you have done, so you have to tell it (a) what the maximum progress amount you will reach is, and then (b) about 100 or so times during the process, tell it which amount you are up to. (If you report progress fewer than 100 times, the progess bar will jump in large steps. If you report more than 100 times, you will just be wasting time trying to report a finer detail than the progress bar will helpfully display)
If your UI thread can happily continue while the background worker is running, then your work is done.
However, realistically, in most situations where the progress indication needs to be running, your UI needs to be very careful to avoid a re-entrant call. e.g. If you are running a progress display while exporting data, you don't want to allow the user to start exporting data again while the export is in progress.
You can handle this in two ways:
The export operation checks to see if the background worker is running, and disabled the export option while it is already importing. This will allow the user to do anything at all in your program except exporting - this could still be dangerous if the user could (for example) edit the data that is being exported.
Run the progress bar as a "modal" display so that your program reamins "alive" during the export, but the user can't actually do anything (other than cancel) until the export completes. DotNet is rubbish at supporting this, even though it's the most common approach. In this case, you need to put the UI thread into a busy wait loop where it calls Application.DoEvents() to keep message handling running (so the progress bar will work), but you need to add a MessageFilter that only allows your application to respond to "safe" events (e.g. it would allow Paint events so your application windows continue to redraw, but it would filter out mouse and keyboard messages so that the user can't actually do anything in the proigram while the export is in progress. There are also a couple of sneaky messages you'll need to pass through to allow the window to work as normal, and figuring these out will take a few minutes - I have a list of them at work, but don't have them to hand here I'm afraid. It's all the obvious ones like NCHITTEST plus a sneaky .net one (evilly in the WM_USER range) which is vital to get this working).
The last "gotcha" with the awful dotNet progress bar is that when you finish your operation and close the progress bar you'll find that it usually exits when reporting a value like "80%". Even if you force it to 100% and then wait for about half a second, it still may not reach 100%. Arrrgh! The solution is to set the progress to 100%, then to 99%, and then back to 100% - when the progress bar is told to move forwards, it animates slowly towards the target value. But if you tell it to go "backwards", it jumps immediately to that position. So by reversing it momentarily at the end, you can get it to actually show the value you asked it to show.
If you want a "rotating" progress bar, why not set the progress bar style to "Marquee" and using a BackgroundWorker to keep the UI responsive? You won't achieve a rotating progress bar easier than using the "Marquee" - style...
We are use modal form with BackgroundWorker for such a thing.
Here is quick solution:
public class ProgressWorker<TArgument> : BackgroundWorker where TArgument : class
{
public Action<TArgument> Action { get; set; }
protected override void OnDoWork(DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
if (Action!=null)
{
Action(e.Argument as TArgument);
}
}
}
public sealed partial class ProgressDlg<TArgument> : Form where TArgument : class
{
private readonly Action<TArgument> action;
public Exception Error { get; set; }
public ProgressDlg(Action<TArgument> action)
{
if (action == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("action");
this.action = action;
//InitializeComponent();
//MaximumSize = Size;
MaximizeBox = false;
Closing += new System.ComponentModel.CancelEventHandler(ProgressDlg_Closing);
}
public string NotificationText
{
set
{
if (value!=null)
{
Invoke(new Action<string>(s => Text = value));
}
}
}
void ProgressDlg_Closing(object sender, System.ComponentModel.CancelEventArgs e)
{
FormClosingEventArgs args = (FormClosingEventArgs)e;
if (args.CloseReason == CloseReason.UserClosing)
{
e.Cancel = true;
}
}
private void ProgressDlg_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
}
public void RunWorker(TArgument argument)
{
System.Windows.Forms.Application.DoEvents();
using (var worker = new ProgressWorker<TArgument> {Action = action})
{
worker.RunWorkerAsync();
worker.RunWorkerCompleted += worker_RunWorkerCompleted;
ShowDialog();
}
}
void worker_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, System.ComponentModel.RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Error != null)
{
Error = e.Error;
DialogResult = DialogResult.Abort;
return;
}
DialogResult = DialogResult.OK;
}
}
And how we use it:
var dlg = new ProgressDlg<string>(obj =>
{
//DoWork()
Thread.Sleep(10000);
MessageBox.Show("Background task completed "obj);
});
dlg.RunWorker("SampleValue");
if (dlg.Error != null)
{
MessageBox.Show(dlg.Error.Message, "ERROR", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
}
dlg.Dispose();