Click here to Skip to main content
15,891,936 members
Articles / Desktop Programming / WPF

Introducing the Model Thread View Thread Pattern

Rate me:
Please Sign up or sign in to vote.
4.93/5 (69 votes)
1 May 2010BSD14 min read 166.1K   862   172  
Reduce threading code, and increase UI responsiveness with a new pattern extending MVVM.
#region File and License Information

/*
<File>
	<Copyright>Copyright © 2009, Daniel Vaughan. All rights reserved.</Copyright>
	<License>
	This file is part of DanielVaughan's base library

    DanielVaughan's base library is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    DanielVaughan's base library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
    along with DanielVaughan's base library.  If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
	</License>
	<Owner Name="Daniel Vaughan" Email="dbvaughan@gmail.com"/>
	<CreationDate>2010-04-22 17:26:58Z</CreationDate>
</File>
*/

#endregion

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Collections.ObjectModel;
using System.Collections.Specialized;
using System.ComponentModel;

using DanielVaughan.Concurrency;

namespace DanielVaughan.MtvtExample.Collections
{
	/// <summary>
	/// Provides <see cref="INotifyCollectionChanged"/> events on the subscription thread 
	/// using an <see cref="ISynchronizationContext"/>.
	/// </summary>
	/// <typeparam name="T">The type of items in the collection.</typeparam>
	public class SynchronizedObservableCollection<T> : Collection<T>, 
		INotifyCollectionChanged, INotifyPropertyChanged
	{
		bool busy;
		readonly DelegateManager collectionChangedManager;
		readonly ISynchronizationContext uiContext;

		/// <summary>
		/// Occurs when the items list of the collection has changed, 
		/// or the collection is reset.
		/// </summary>
		public event NotifyCollectionChangedEventHandler CollectionChanged
		{
			add
			{
				collectionChangedManager.Add(value);
			}
			remove
			{
				collectionChangedManager.Remove(value);
			}
		}

		PropertyChangedEventHandler propertyChanged;

		/// <summary>
		/// Occurs when a property value changes.
		/// </summary>
		event PropertyChangedEventHandler INotifyPropertyChanged.PropertyChanged
		{
			add
			{
				propertyChanged += value;
			}
			remove
			{
				propertyChanged -= value;
			}
		}

		/// <summary>
		/// Initializes a new instance 
		/// of the <see cref="SynchronizedObservableCollection&lt;T&gt;"/> class.
		/// </summary>
		/// <param name="contextProvider">The synchronization context provider, 
		/// which is used to determine on what thread a handler is invoked.</param>
		public SynchronizedObservableCollection(
			IProvider<ISynchronizationContext> contextProvider = null)
		{
			uiContext = UISynchronizationContext.Instance;
			collectionChangedManager = new DelegateManager(true, contextProvider: contextProvider);
		}

		/// <summary>
		/// Initializes a new instance 
		/// of the <see cref="SynchronizedObservableCollection&lt;T&gt;"/> class.
		/// </summary>
		/// <param name="collection">The collection to copy.</param>
		/// <param name="contextProvider">The synchronization context provider, 
		/// which is used to determine on what thread a handler is invoked.</param>
		public SynchronizedObservableCollection(IEnumerable<T> collection, 
			IProvider<ISynchronizationContext> contextProvider = null) : this(contextProvider)
		{
			ArgumentValidator.AssertNotNull(collection, "collection");
			CopyFrom(collection);
		}

		public SynchronizedObservableCollection(List<T> list, 
			IProvider<ISynchronizationContext> contextProvider = null) 
			: base(list != null ? new List<T>(list.Count) : list)
		{
			uiContext = UISynchronizationContext.Instance;
			collectionChangedManager = new DelegateManager(true, contextProvider: contextProvider);
			CopyFrom(list);
		}

		void PreventReentrancy()
		{
			if (busy)
			{
				throw new InvalidOperationException(
					"Cannot Change SynchronizedObservableCollection");
			}
		}

		protected override void ClearItems()
		{
			uiContext.InvokeAndBlockUntilCompletion(
				delegate
				{
					PreventReentrancy();
					base.ClearItems();
					OnPropertyChanged("Count");
					OnPropertyChanged("Item[]");
					OnCollectionChanged(new NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs(
						NotifyCollectionChangedAction.Reset));                                  		
				});
		}

		void CopyFrom(IEnumerable<T> collection)
		{
			uiContext.InvokeAndBlockUntilCompletion(
				delegate
				{
					IList<T> items = Items;
					if (collection != null && items != null)
					{
						using (IEnumerator<T> enumerator = collection.GetEnumerator())
						{
							while (enumerator.MoveNext())
							{
								items.Add(enumerator.Current);
							}
						}
					}
				});
		}

		protected override void InsertItem(int index, T item)
		{
			uiContext.InvokeAndBlockUntilCompletion(
				delegate
				{
					base.InsertItem(index, item);
					OnPropertyChanged("Count");
					OnPropertyChanged("Item[]");
					OnCollectionChanged(new NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs(
						NotifyCollectionChangedAction.Add, item, index));
				});
		}

		protected virtual void OnCollectionChanged(NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs e)
		{
			busy = true;
			try
			{
				collectionChangedManager.InvokeDelegates(null, e);
			}
			finally
			{
				busy = false;
			}
		}

		protected virtual void OnPropertyChanged(PropertyChangedEventArgs e)
		{
			if (propertyChanged != null)
			{
				busy = true;
				try
				{
					propertyChanged(this, e);
				}
				finally
				{
					busy = false;
				}
			}
		}

		void OnPropertyChanged(string propertyName)
		{
			OnPropertyChanged(new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName));
		}
		
		protected override void RemoveItem(int index)
		{
			uiContext.InvokeAndBlockUntilCompletion(
				delegate
				{
					PreventReentrancy();
					T changedItem = base[index];
					base.RemoveItem(index);

					OnPropertyChanged("Count");
					OnPropertyChanged("Item[]");
					OnCollectionChanged(new NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs(
						NotifyCollectionChangedAction.Remove, changedItem, index));
				});
		}

		protected override void SetItem(int index, T item)
		{
			uiContext.InvokeAndBlockUntilCompletion(
				delegate
				{
					PreventReentrancy();
					T oldItem = base[index];
					base.SetItem(index, item);

					OnPropertyChanged("Item[]");
					OnCollectionChanged(new NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs(
						NotifyCollectionChangedAction.Replace, item, oldItem, index));
				});
		}
	}
}

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, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The BSD License


Written By
Engineer
Switzerland Switzerland
Daniel is a former senior engineer in Technology and Research at the Office of the CTO at Microsoft, working on next generation systems.

Previously Daniel was a nine-time Microsoft MVP and co-founder of Outcoder, a Swiss software and consulting company.

Daniel is the author of Windows Phone 8 Unleashed and Windows Phone 7.5 Unleashed, both published by SAMS.

Daniel is the developer behind several acclaimed mobile apps including Surfy Browser for Android and Windows Phone. Daniel is the creator of a number of popular open-source projects, most notably Codon.

Would you like Daniel to bring value to your organisation? Please contact

Blog | Twitter


Xamarin Experts
Windows 10 Experts

Comments and Discussions