Background Worker and Timer

Question

0.00/5 (No votes)

See more:

Hi,

I am trying to write this application. Currently I have a BackgroundWorker thread to do some operation. Inside the worker thread, I have this loop to do the work n amount of times and also a delay time in which I used to pause the loop.

Currently it looks something like this

C#

 bg_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{ ......
  repeat = 10;
  int i = 0;
  int delay = 5;

  while ( i < repeat)
  {  //do some work 
      i++;
      //pause for n seconds
      System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(delay*1000)
  }

This works fine. However, I want have a timer to count down or up during the delay duration, in the UI thread. I tried creating a timer in the background thread but the tick event won't invoke because it is not in the UI thread. What is the best way of doing this?

Thank you,
dbzx

Posted 20-Nov-12 7:39am

dbzx734

Add a Solution

Comments

earloc 20-Nov-12 13:49pm

what should the timer do? just keep track of the elapsed time?

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 20-Nov-12 13:52pm

Yes, the need of the timer is questionable. Chances are, it's not needed. However, I've chosen to advice on timer use. The problem is pretty usual -- please see my answer.
--SA

dbzx734 20-Nov-12 13:57pm

well i just want to show the accurate delay of the loop on the UI thread during the pause.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 20-Nov-12 14:15pm

The thing is: you can still use a loop with Sleep, but for exact timing just poll the current time using System.DateTime.Now or Stopwatch (for very high accuracy). These are not timers; but a timer might not be needed.
You just need to show accurate delay time -- here you go. Got the idea? This is much better than a timer, safer...
--SA

dbzx734 20-Nov-12 14:36pm

Thank you for your response. It helped a lot. I think I figured out how to to it. Loop sleep at intervals of 1 second and update the textbox(which stores the time) using invoke and etc..

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 20-Nov-12 14:41pm

Great. Then please accept my answer formally (green button) -- thanks.
--SA

2 solutions

Solution 2

i think :

C#

bg_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{ ......
  repeat = 10;
  int i = 0;
  int delay = 5;
  DateTime d=DateTime.Now;
 
  while ( i < repeat)
  { 
      TimeSpan ts=d.Subtract(DateTime.Now); 
      if(ts.Seconds==5)
        {
         //do some work 
         i++;
         d=DateTime.Now;
        }
      else
      //count down/up any other variable
      
  }

Posted 20-Nov-12 8:40am

farshad saeidi

Updated 20-Nov-12 8:46am

v2

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

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

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-20T07:50:00

I'm still not sure that you really need that timer, as you did not really explain the purpose, but if you do, the best way is not using System.Windows.Forms.Timer. There are at least three more timers in .NET, and this one is the worst. You can use it only if you have no requirements to accuracy and can tolerate the 100% or more of timing error. The only one good but questionable feature of this timer is that its use is simplified: its tick event handler is also called in UI thread, which is, in your case, also a hassle. (However, you did not tag your UI library, so I'm not sure you tried to work with System.Windows.Forms, but I think this is pretty likely.)

You can choose from System.Threading.Timer, System.Timers.Timer or System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherTimer (WPF). Most likely, you would rather prefer System.Timers.Timer:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.timers.timer.aspx[^].

The only difficulty is: this timer tick event handler is not guaranteed to be called in the UI thread, so you will need to use the same very invocation mechanism you would use in a non-UI thread to delegate some UI operation to be executed in the UI thread. You cannot call anything related to UI from non-UI thread. Instead, you need to use the method Invoke or BeginInvoke of System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher (for both Forms or WPF) or System.Windows.Forms.Control (Forms only).

You will find detailed explanation of how it works and code samples in my past answers:
Control.Invoke() vs. Control.BeginInvoke()[^],
Problem with Treeview Scanner And MD5[^].

See also more references on threading:
How to get a keydown event to operate on a different thread in vb.net[^],
Control events not firing after enable disable + multithreading[^].

—SA