We Keep Coding

Updating the UI right before running the BackgroundWorker

I have this really little problem, but which can't be easily solved. Currently, my program has 2 buttons, a "Start" and a "Cancel". When the user clicks the start, the buttons should go instantly:
StartButton.IsEnabled = false;
CancelButton.IsEnabled = true;
But this occurs only when the BackgroundWorker has finished (all the code which will be ran after pressing the button), because the UI is always updated as last. There's no way I could add these commands to the "ProgressChanged" or "Completed" event of the backgroundworker. These events can take up to 10min to complete.
One easy way is to add these commands to the "ProgressChanged" part, and in the end "Complete" change their state again. But I'd like to avoid this, as the buttons should be showing their real state all the time, not after few "ProgressChanged" events. Of course there's always ways around, like not using the button's UI properties.
Is there any short solution for this?
It doesn't work to add the Button.Property changes to the ClickEvent. That's the main problem in this. I can easily use the "Completed" part of BGW to change the Button's back to match the starting state. The problem is to get them set right before all the events and BGW.

if you have a start button like:
this.StartButton = new System.Windows.Forms.Button();
then you can do
this.StartButton.Click += new System.EventHandler(this.button1_Click);
and then do
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
StartButton.IsEnabled = false;
CancelButton.IsEnabled = true;
Thread bg = new Thread(new ThreadStart( UpdateDatabase()));
bg.Start();
}
if you want the bg thread to send messages to the UI use the Invoke method like here
public delegate void UpdateUIHndler();
public void UpdateUI()
{
}
and do
if (InvokeRequired)
{
Invoke(new UpdateUIHndler(UpdateUI));
}

Take a look at a previous question of mine (quite similer). I should go for option 1.
ASP.NET Application log while code is running / progress bar
UI will only be delayed 5 seconds. Instead of text update the button styling using AJAX.

you can disable the start button in the click event of that button itself and enable it again it on RunWorkerCompleted event of BGW as shown below
BackgroundWorker _worker = new BackgroundWorker();
_worker.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(_worker_DoWork);
private void StartButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
startButton.IsEnabled = false;
}
void _worker_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
{
stratButton.IsEnabled = true;
}
void _worker_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
//Your processing code
}

Close form after stopping background worker not working

I have been trying many different thing and can't get this code to work. My code to stop backgroundworker then close window.
protected override void OnFormClosing(FormClosingEventArgs e)
{
if (bw.IsBusy)
{
bw.CancelAsync();
e.Cancel = true;
MessageBox.Show("close"); //Does show
return;
}
base.OnFormClosing(e);
}
During bw worker
if (worker.CancellationPending)
{
MessageBox.Show("Cancel"); // Does not show
//Cancel
e.Cancel = true;
}
On completed background worker
private void bw_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
{
MessageBox.Show("Completed"); //Does not work
//Check if restart
if (bw_restart)
{
bw_restart = false;
bw.RunWorkerAsync();
}
//If it was cancelled
if (e.Cancelled)
{
this.Close();
}
//If error show error message
else if (e.Error != null)
{
MessageBox.Show(e.Error.ToString()); // Does not show
}
else //No errors or cancelled
{
MessageBox.Show(e.ToString()); //Does not shoiw
}
}
Cancel button
private void cancel_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
bw.CancelAsync(); //Does not work :s
}
It does not close the window, the X when pressed does not do anything, I got it to close the form but not with stopping the background worker, driving me a bit mad. Link to code i got for this problem that not working: How to stop BackgroundWorker on Form's Closing event?

if (e.Cancelled)
That's fundamentally wrong. You can never be 100% sure that it will be set. Canceling a BGW is always a race condition, the BGW might have been busy exiting when you called its CancelAsync() method so never saw the CancellationPending set to true so never assigned e.Cancel = true in the DoWork event handler.
All you know for a fact is that mClosePending is reliable, since it was set to true on the UI thread. So always call Close() it it is set to true, regardless of the e.Cancelled state.
And yes, checking e.Error doesn't hurt either. But still check mClosePending.

As stated in my comment, your BackgroundWorker has ended due to an error, try adding the following at the top of your run worker completed. Once this error has been resolved your question will be more answerable.
if(e.Error != null)
MessageBox.Show(e.Error.toString());//Put a breakpoint here also

CancelAsync doesn't actually abort your thread or anything like that. It sends a message to the worker thread that work should be cancelled via BackgroundWorker.CancellationPending. Your DoWork delegate that is being ran in the background must periodically check this property and handle the cancellation itself.
Look at this:
private BackgroundWorker background;
private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
background = new BackgroundWorker();
background.WorkerSupportsCancellation = true;
background.DoWork += BackgroundOnDoWork;
background.RunWorkerCompleted += BackgroundOnRunWorkerCompleted;
background.RunWorkerAsync();
}
private void BackgroundOnRunWorkerCompleted(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs runWorkerCompletedEventArgs)
{
MessageBox.Show("stop");
}
private void BackgroundOnDoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs doWorkEventArgs)
{
// your doWork loop should check if someone don't call background.CancelAsync();
while (!background.CancellationPending)
{
// do something
}
}
private void ButtonClick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
background.CancelAsync();
}

Event not raising properly in forms

I have a MainWindow with eventhandler which is not working properly. I have made simple model of this problem. Please see comment in code where the problem is:
public partial class MainWindow : Window
{
public event EventHandler Event1;
public MainWindow()
{
Event1 += MainWindow_Event1;
InitializeComponent();
}
void MainWindow_Event1(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
textBox1.Text = "wth!?"; //Not changing text box. Not showing message. If delete this line, it will work fine
MessageBox.Show("raised");
}
private void bw_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
EventHandler evt = Event1;
while (true)
{
Thread.Sleep(500);
evt(null, null);
}
}
private void Button_Click_1(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
BackgroundWorker bw = new BackgroundWorker();
bw.DoWork += bw_DoWork;
bw.RunWorkerAsync();
}
}
Please explain this behavior and how can I fix it?

The problem is that you're invoking the event from a background thread. This will not work and the program is simply hanging when trying to access the TextBox. However, if you change this code:
textBox1.Text = "wth!?"; //Not changing text box. Not showing message. If delete this line, it will work fine
MessageBox.Show("raised");
to this:
this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke((Action)delegate()
{
textBox1.Text = "wth!?"; //Not changing text box. Not showing message. If delete this line, it will work fine
MessageBox.Show("raised");
});
it'll work for you.

You can't update the UI elements from the background thread.
The worker thread fails by exception trying to access the UI element (Text property). So messageBox isn't showing as well. Use notification mechanisms, or Dispatcher calls (there is a wast amount of information like this on the web)
Here are possible duplicates/help:
Update GUI using BackgroundWorker
Update GUI from background worker or event

This problem is because you need to use the Synchronization Context of the current Thread for comunicating between threads, some thing like this
private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
var sync = SynchronizationContext.Current;
BackgroundWorker w = new BackgroundWorker();
w.DoWork+=(_, __)=>
{
//Do some delayed thing, that doesn't update the view
sync.Post(p => { /*Do things that update the view*/}, null);
};
w.RunWorkerAsync();
}
Please check this question, hope can helps...

Is CancelAsync working or not?

I've made a small app where Form is threaded (using BackgroundWorker), and in the form I'm calling a function QuitApplication in Program class when I want to quit.
The DoWork looks like this:
static void guiThread_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
BackgroundWorker worker = sender as BackgroundWorker;
while (true)
{
if (worker.CancellationPending == true)
{
e.Cancel = true;
break;
}
if (Program.instance.form != null)
{
Program.instance.form.UpdateStatus(Program.instance.statusText, Program.instance.statusProgress);
}
Thread.Sleep(GUI_THREAD_UPDATE_TIME);
}
}
and in the Form1 class i have this method attached to the closing of the window:
void Form1_FormClosed(object sender, FormClosedEventArgs e)
{
Program.instance.SetStatus("Closing down...", 0);
Program.QuitApplication();
}
So what i want is to ensure that everything quits when I press the X on the window. However, the if( worker.CancellationPending == true ) never hits... why is this?
QuitApplication looks like this:
public static void QuitApplication()
{
Program.instance.guiThread.CancelAsync();
Application.Exit();
}
And Im using guiThread.WorkerSupportsCancellation = true

CancelAsync is setting the CancellationPending property, but then you immediately quit the application without giving the background thread a chance to detect that and shut down. You need to change your UI code to wait for the background thread to finish.
Personally, when I write apps like this, I make the form close button act like a Cancel button rather than quit immediately. It's a lot safer for the end user. For example:
private void abortButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {
// I would normally prompt the user here for safety.
worker.CancelAsync();
}
private void Form1_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e) {
if(worker.IsBusy) {
// If we are still processing, it's not very friendly to suddenly abort without warning.
// Convert it into a polite request instead.
abortButton.PerformClick();
e.Cancel = true;
}
}

Pause and Resume a For-Loop in C#

I'm working on a windows App in C#, I have a for-loop which update something in a loop, and I have 3 buttons on the form named "Stop,Pause,Resume". So the purpose is as same as the buttons named. Does anyone know how to do this?
Here is the Loop
private void btnCompleteAuto_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
setGeneralValue();
for (int i = 1; i <= autoGridView.Rows.Count - 1; i++)
{
if (SRP == "Pause") // this is what I was thinking but it won't work
{ // it will step into end-less loop
do // how to stop this loop on "Resume" button click
{
}while(SRP!="Resume")
}
car = false;
try
{
MemberID = Convert.ToInt64(autoGridView.Rows[0].Cells["Member_ID"].Value);
DispID = Convert.ToString(autoGridView.Rows[0].Cells["Disp_Id"].Value);
Mobile = Convert.ToString(autoGridView.Rows[0].Cells["Mobile"].Value);
DueDate = Convert.ToString(autoGridView.Rows[0].Cells["Due_Date"].Value);
}
catch (Exception)
{
MessageBox.Show("Row Not Found");
}
AutoRecharge(network_name, pack_name, Mobile, Mobile, Convert.ToString(autoGridView.Rows[0].Cells["Rck_Amt"].Value), vendor_id, vendor_pwd, pack_id, oxinetwork_id);
autoGridView.Rows.RemoveAt(0);
}
}
Here are the 3 button events in which I'm setting a variable
private void btnPause_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
SRP = "Pause";
}
private void btnStop_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
SRP = "Stop";
autoGridView.DataSource = "";
}
private void btnResume_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
SRP = "Resume";
}

The reason this doesn't work as you expect is this:
A Windows Forms application uses a single UI thread, which continually processes incoming messages from a queue. Any event handlers you attach to the events of a Windows Forms control get sent to this queue and processed by the UI thread as quickly as possible.
Your btnCompleteAuto_Click is one such handler. Once it starts, nothing else will be processed by the UI thread until it exits. Thus any other handlers you attach to other events (btnPause_Click, btnStop_Click, etc.) must wait their turn, as they will run on the same (UI) thread.
If you want pause/resume functionality, this has to be achieved on a separate thread.
A possible way to implement it might be to use a BackgroundWorker, as suggested by saurabh.
Here is a rough sketch of what your updated code might look like (I have not even attempted to compile this, let alone debug it; it's intended only as a basic outline of how you might accomplish this functionality).
You need to be aware, however, that accessing UI controls directly from a non-UI thread is a no-no. Use a mechanism such as the BackgroundWorker.ProgressChanged event to handle any UI updates that you need to happen based on activity on a non-UI thread.
ManualResetEvent _busy = new ManualResetEvent(false);
private void btnCompleteAuto_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!backgroundWorker.IsBusy)
{
_busy.Set();
btnAutoCompleteAuto.Text = "Pause";
backgroundWorker.RunWorkerAsync();
}
else
{
_busy.Reset();
btnAutoCompleteAuto.Text = "Resume";
}
btnStop.Enabled = true;
}
private void btnStop_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
_busy.Set();
backgroundWorker.CancelAsync();
}
private void backgroundWorker_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
// for (something)
// {
_busy.WaitOne();
if (backgroundWorker.CancellationPending)
{
return;
}
// Do your work here.
// }
}
private void backgroundWorker_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
{
_busy.Reset();
btnAutoCompleteAuto.Text = "Start";
btnStop.Enabled = false;
}

After Reading your actual requirement in our comment , i would suggest that use Background worker class which supports cancellation of running process.
See here