How to Display a Toast Message and Remove It When the Application Closes

• Download SimpleToast.zip - 483.7 KB

Introduction

This is my first tip on adding a toast notification to a uwp app.

I'm not a professional programmer and don't intend to be one. Just as a hobby, I program small applications.

I have also created a very simple and very basic demonstration application. You can download the sourcecode.

Background

For work and hobby, I change USB Comm ports a lot. You always hear a sound but never see a message like 'Serial USB device COM5 inserted'. I have created only for my personal use a simple and basic program in C# for UWP. This program listens for USB insertions en checks if it is a serial port. Then when I insert a USB Comm port device I see a toast message with the text "device COM5 inserted". For my very handy.

Using the Code

To display a toast, you need to set up a simple template.

//Display a toast message
private void displayToastNotification(String caption, String message)
{
  var toastTemplate = "<toast launch=\"app-defined-string\">" +
                      "<visual>" +
                        "<binding template =\"ToastGeneric\">" +
                          "<text>" + caption + "</text>" +
                          "<text>" + message + "</text>" +
                        "</binding>" +
                      "</visual>" +
                      "</toast>";

  var xmlDocument = new XmlDocument();
 
  xmlDocument.LoadXml(toastTemplate);
  
  var toastNotification = new ToastNotification(xmlDocument);
 
  var notification = ToastNotificationManager.CreateToastNotifier();
            
  notification.Show(toastNotification);
}

When the user clicks the button 'Toast' a toast message appears.

//Button Toast
private void btnToasTest_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
  displayToastNotification("Hello world!", "This is my message!");
}

When the user clicks the button 'Close' all toast messages are remove from notification center

 //Button Close
private void btnCloseApp_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
  removeToastHistory();
  Application.Current.Exit();
}

When the user closes the application, I want to clear the notifications too. I accomplished this with this simple function.

//Remove toast history
private void removeToastHistory()
{
  var toastHistory = ToastNotificationManager.History;
  toastHistory.Clear();
}

That's all....

Points of Interest

On the internet, I found a lot of examples how to create a toast notification but not how to neatly remove it when the application closes. I solved it like this.

History

• No history yet..... I might post my simple USB COMM port watcher application in the future. For now only the very simple and very basic application for the toast only.