Click here to Skip to main content
15,896,606 members
Articles / Desktop Programming / Windows Forms

Getting Around InvokeRequired Without Copy and Paste

Rate me:
Please Sign up or sign in to vote.
4.93/5 (14 votes)
17 Aug 20072 min read 122K   749   53  
Instead of copying and pasting the same if(InvokeRequired) logic in every multithreaded function, use attributes to make code cleaner, its centralize logic and make it self documenting.
using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;

using Osherove.SimpleInterception.AOPAttributes;

namespace AOP.UnitTest
{
    public partial class AOP_TestForm : Form
    {
        LoadTypeEnum LoadType;
        public enum LoadTypeEnum
        {
            Bad,
            GoodManual,
            GoodAOP
        }

        public AOP_TestForm() : this(LoadTypeEnum.GoodAOP)
        {
        }

        public AOP_TestForm(LoadTypeEnum LoadType)
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            this.LoadType = LoadType;
        }

        public delegate void InvokeRequiredEventType(bool isRequired);
        public event InvokeRequiredEventType InvokeRequiredEvent;

        /// <summary>
        /// This is bad behavior, directly calling UI functionality from within a thread
        /// </summary>
        private void DoThreadedBad()
        {
            if (InvokeRequiredEvent != null) InvokeRequiredEvent(textBox1.InvokeRequired);
            this.Close(); //close the form after we get the event which must be raised
        }

        public delegate void DoThreadedGoodManualType();
        /// <summary>
        /// This is good behavior, but this manual invoke required junk has to be done every time
        /// </summary>
        private void DoThreadedGoodManual()
        {
            if (this.InvokeRequired)
            {
                // Pass the same function to BeginInvoke, but the call would come on the correct thread and InvokeRequired will be false.
                this.BeginInvoke(new DoThreadedGoodManualType(DoThreadedGoodManual));

                return;
            }

            DoThreadedBad(); //now we can do our normal functionality with no worries
        }

        [RunInUIThread]
        protected virtual void DoThreadedGoodAOP()
        {
            DoThreadedBad();
        }

        private void textBox1_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {

        }

        private void AOP_TestForm_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            //kick off UI change in new thread, should be illegal
            Thread t = null;
            
            switch(LoadType)
            {
                case LoadTypeEnum.Bad:
                    t = new Thread(new ThreadStart(DoThreadedBad));
                    break;
                case LoadTypeEnum.GoodManual:
                    t = new Thread(new ThreadStart(DoThreadedGoodManual));
                    break;
                case LoadTypeEnum.GoodAOP:
                    t = new Thread(new ThreadStart(DoThreadedGoodAOP));
                    break;
            }

            t.Start();
        }
    }

}

By viewing downloads associated with this article you agree to the Terms of Service and the article's licence.

If a file you wish to view isn't highlighted, and is a text file (not binary), please let us know and we'll add colourisation support for it.

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here


Written By
United States United States
I've been a software developer since 1996 and have enjoyed C# since 2003. I have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and for some reason, a Master's degree in Business Administration. I currently do software development contracting/consulting.

Comments and Discussions