Best practices on multithread updates to winform control

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I have a listview that is updated from a separate monitoring thread. This is updated using the standard invoke method of:

C#

private delegate void addListviewItem(ListViewItem lvItem); 

private void someProcedure()
{
if (this.listView1.InvokeRequired)
 {
    var del = new addListviewItem(addToListview1);
    listView1.Invoke(del, new object[] {tempLVI});
   }else{
    addToListview1(tempLVI);
 }
}
private void addToListview1(ListViewItem lvItem)
            {
                listView1.Items.Add(lvItem);
            }

So, question: If you know that this will always be called from a separate thread, can't you just say:

//some code here

C#

var del = new addListviewItem(addToListview1);
listView1.Invoke(del, new object[] {tempLVI});

???
Is the previous method (testing if invoke is required) just a best practice to prevent overhead with using a delegate unnecessarily (for example if you are not sure what thread you might be on)?

Thanks!

Posted 15-Jan-12 13:40pm

rune711

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 15-Jan-12 20:09pm

This question is so correct that you almost don't need an answer. Nevertheless, I answered in detail (as it can interesting to other readers) and voted 5 for this question.

Cheers,
--SA

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This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-15T14:08:00

You are absolutely right. InvokeRequired is only needed in methods which is called sometimes from the UI thread (and then invocation is never needed) and sometimes from some non-UI thread (no matter which). The more usual case is when you create some method only to be called from a non-UI thread. In this case, there is no need to check the predicate function InvokeRequired — it is always required. You will save some CPU time.

I explained in detail how invocation works in WPF and Forms in my past answers:
Control.Invoke() vs. Control.BeginInvoke()[^],
Problem with Treeview Scanner And MD5[^].

As I was able to see, not everyone understands that without a UI thread this mechanism effectively does not work. Formally, invocation does not fail, but the behavior becomes trivial: the call is simply performed in the calling thread. :-(.

What to do in this case? For example, one can create a similar mechanism. Actually, I provided such code at CodeProject with detailed explanation and usage sample. In particular, you can queue delegate instances and use them in other thread. Please see my Tips & Trick article: Simple Blocking Queue for Thread Communication and Inter-thread Invocation[^].

—SA

Best practices on multithread updates to winform control

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Best practices on multithread updates to winform control

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