Develop Reference

C# Multithreading with slots

I have this function which checks for proxy servers and currently it checks only a number of threads and waits for all to finish until the next set is starting. Is it possible to start a new thread as soon as one is finished from the maximum allowed?
for (int i = 0; i < listProxies.Count(); i+=nThreadsNum)
{
for (nCurrentThread = 0; nCurrentThread < nThreadsNum; nCurrentThread++)
{
if (nCurrentThread < nThreadsNum)
{
string strProxyIP = listProxies[i + nCurrentThread].sIPAddress;
int nPort = listProxies[i + nCurrentThread].nPort;
tasks.Add(Task.Factory.StartNew<ProxyAddress>(() => CheckProxyServer(strProxyIP, nPort, nCurrentThread)));
}
}
Task.WaitAll(tasks.ToArray());
foreach (var tsk in tasks)
{
ProxyAddress result = tsk.Result;
UpdateProxyDBRecord(result.sIPAddress, result.bOnlineStatus);
}
tasks.Clear();
}

This seems much more simple:
int numberProcessed = 0;
Parallel.ForEach(listProxies,
new ParallelOptions { MaxDegreeOfParallelism = nThreadsNum },
(p)=> {
var result = CheckProxyServer(p.sIPAddress, s.nPort, Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId);
UpdateProxyDBRecord(result.sIPAddress, result.bOnlineStatus);
Interlocked.Increment(numberProcessed);
});
With slots:
var obj = new Object();
var slots = new List<int>();
Parallel.ForEach(listProxies,
new ParallelOptions { MaxDegreeOfParallelism = nThreadsNum },
(p)=> {
int threadId = Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId;
int slot = slots.IndexOf(threadId);
if (slot == -1)
{
lock(obj)
{
slots.Add(threadId);
}
slot = slots.IndexOf(threadId);
}
var result = CheckProxyServer(p.sIPAddress, s.nPort, slot);
UpdateProxyDBRecord(result.sIPAddress, result.bOnlineStatus);
});
I took a few shortcuts there to guarantee thread safety. You don't have to do the normal check-lock-check dance because there will never be two threads attempting to add the same threadid to the list, so the second check will always fail and isn't needed. Secondly, for the same reason, I don't believe you need to ever lock around the outer IndexOf either. That makes this a very highly efficient concurrent routine that rarely locks (it should only lock nThreadsNum times) no matter how many items are in the enumerable.

Another solution is to use a SemaphoreSlim or the Producer-Consumer Pattern using a BlockinCollection<T>. Both solution support cancellation.
SemaphoreSlim
private async Task CheckProxyServerAsync(IEnumerable<object> proxies)
{
var tasks = new List<Task>();
int currentThreadNumber = 0;
int maxNumberOfThreads = 8;
using (semaphore = new SemaphoreSlim(maxNumberOfThreads, maxNumberOfThreads))
{
foreach (var proxy in proxies)
{
// Asynchronously wait until thread is available if thread limit reached
await semaphore.WaitAsync();
string proxyIP = proxy.IPAddress;
int port = proxy.Port;
tasks.Add(Task.Run(() => CheckProxyServer(proxyIP, port, Interlocked.Increment(ref currentThreadNumber)))
.ContinueWith(
(task) =>
{
ProxyAddress result = task.Result;
// Method call must be thread-safe!
UpdateProxyDbRecord(result.IPAddress, result.OnlineStatus);
Interlocked.Decrement(ref currentThreadNumber);
// Allow to start next thread if thread limit was reached
semaphore.Release();
},
TaskContinuationOptions.OnlyOnRanToCompletion));
}
// Asynchronously wait until all tasks are completed
// to prevent premature disposal of semaphore
await Task.WhenAll(tasks);
}
}
Producer-Consumer Pattern
// Uses a fixed number of same threads
private async Task CheckProxyServerAsync(IEnumerable<ProxyInfo> proxies)
{
var pipe = new BlockingCollection<ProxyInfo>();
int maxNumberOfThreads = 8;
var tasks = new List<Task>();
// Create all threads (count == maxNumberOfThreads)
for (int currentThreadNumber = 0; currentThreadNumber < maxNumberOfThreads; currentThreadNumber++)
{
tasks.Add(
Task.Run(() => ConsumeProxyInfo(pipe, currentThreadNumber)));
}
proxies.ToList().ForEach(pipe.Add);
pipe.CompleteAdding();
await Task.WhenAll(tasks);
}
private void ConsumeProxyInfo(BlockingCollection<ProxyInfo> proxiesPipe, int currentThreadNumber)
{
while (!proxiesPipe.IsCompleted)
{
if (proxiesPipe.TryTake(out ProxyInfo proxy))
{
int port = proxy.Port;
string proxyIP = proxy.IPAddress;
ProxyAddress result = CheckProxyServer(proxyIP, port, currentThreadNumber);
// Method call must be thread-safe!
UpdateProxyDbRecord(result.IPAddress, result.OnlineStatus);
}
}
}

If I'm understanding your question properly, this is actually fairly simple to do with await Task.WhenAny. Basically, you keep a collection of all of the running tasks. Once you reach a certain number of tasks running, you wait for one or more of your tasks to finish, and then you remove the tasks that were completed from your collection and continue to add more tasks.
Here's an example of what I mean below:
var tasks = new List<Task>();
for (int i = 0; i < 20; i++)
{
// I want my list of tasks to contain at most 5 tasks at once
if (tasks.Count == 5)
{
// Wait for at least one of the tasks to complete
await Task.WhenAny(tasks.ToArray());
// Remove all of the completed tasks from the list
tasks = tasks.Where(t => !t.IsCompleted).ToList();
}
// Add some task to the list
tasks.Add(Task.Factory.StartNew(async delegate ()
{
await Task.Delay(1000);
}));
}

I suggest changing your approach slightly. Instead of starting and stopping threads, put your proxy server data in a concurrent queue, one item for each proxy server. Then create a fixed number of threads (or async tasks) to work on the queue. This is more likely to provide smooth performance (you aren't starting and stopping threads over and over, which has overhead) and is a lot easier to code, in my opinion.
A simple example:
class ProxyChecker
{
private ConcurrentQueue<ProxyInfo> _masterQueue = new ConcurrentQueue<ProxyInfo>();
public ProxyChecker(IEnumerable<ProxyInfo> listProxies)
{
foreach (var proxy in listProxies)
{
_masterQueue.Enqueue(proxy);
}
}
public async Task RunChecks(int maximumConcurrency)
{
var count = Math.Max(maximumConcurrency, _masterQueue.Count);
var tasks = Enumerable.Range(0, count).Select( i => WorkerTask() ).ToList();
await Task.WhenAll(tasks);
}
private async Task WorkerTask()
{
ProxyInfo proxyInfo;
while ( _masterList.TryDequeue(out proxyInfo))
{
DoTheTest(proxyInfo.IP, proxyInfo.Port)
}
}
}

Tasks are starting sequencial instead of parallel

I need to start tasks in parallel, but I choose to use Task.Run instead of Parallel.Foreach, so I can get some feedback when all tasks finished and enable UI controls.
private async void buttonStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
var cells = objectListView.CheckedObjects;
if(cells != null)
{
List<Task> tasks = new List<Task>();
foreach (Cell c in cells)
{
Cell cell = c;
var progressHandler = new Progress<string>(value =>
{
cell.Status = value;
});
var progress = progressHandler as IProgress<string>;
Task t = Task.Run(() =>
{
progress.Report("Starting...");
int a = 123;
for (int i = 0; i < 200000; i++)
{
a = a + i;
Task.Delay(500).Wait();
}
progress.Report("Done");
});
tasks.Add(t);
}
await Task.WhenAll(tasks);
Console.WriteLine("Done, enabld UI controls");
}
}
So what I expect is that I see in UI "Starting..." almost instantly for all items. What I actually see is first 4 items are "Starting..." (I guess because all 4 CPU cores are used per thread), then each second or less new item is "Starting". I have total 37 items and it takes around 30 seconds for all items to start all tasks.
How can I make it as parallel as possible?

How can I make it as parallel as possible?
The part of inner for loop is simulating long running CPU-bound job, which I would like to start at the same time as much as possible.
It's already as parallel as possible. Starting 37 threads that all have CPU-bound work to do will not make it go any faster, since you're apparently running it on a 4-core machine. There are 4 cores, so only 4 threads can actually run at a time. The other 33 threads are going to be waiting while 4 are running. They would only appear to run simultaneously.
That said, if you really want to start up all those thread pool threads, you can do this by calling ThreadPool.SetMinThreads.
I need to start tasks in parallel, but I choose to use Task.Run instead of Parallel.Foreach, so I can get some feedback when all tasks finished and enable UI controls.
Since you have parallel work to do, you should use Parallel. If you want the nice resume-on-the-UI-thread behavior of await, then you can use a single await Task.Run, something like this:
private async void buttonStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
var cells = objectListView.CheckedObjects;
if (cells == null)
return;
var workItems = cells.Select(c => new
{
Cell = c,
Progress = new Progress<string>(value => { c.Status = value; }),
}).ToList();
await Task.Run(() => Parallel.ForEach(workItems, item =>
{
var progress = item.Progress as IProgress<string>();
progress.Report("Starting...");
int a = 123;
for (int i = 0; i < 200000; i++)
{
a = a + i;
Thread.Sleep(500);
}
progress.Report("Done");
}));
Console.WriteLine("Done, enabld UI controls");
}

I'd say, it is as parallel as possible. If you have 4 cores, you can run 4 threads in parallel.
If you can do stuff while waiting for the "delay", have a look into asynchronous programming (where one thread can run multiple tasks "at once", because most of them are waiting for something).
EDIT: you can also run Parallel.ForEach in its own task and await that:
private async void buttonStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
var cells = objectListView.CheckedObjects;
if(cells != null)
{
await Task.Run( () => Parallel.ForEach( cells, c => ... ) );
}
}

I think it relies on your taskcreation-options.
TaskCreationOptions.LongRunning
Here you can find further informations:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.threading.tasks.taskcreationoptions(v=vs.110).aspx
But you have to know, that task uses a threadpool with a finite maximum amount of threads. You can use LongRunning to signal, that this task needs a long time and should not clog your pool. I thinks it's more complex to create a long-running task, because the scheduler may create a new thread.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
namespace TaskTest
{
internal class Program
{
private static void Main(string[] args)
{
var demo = new Program();
demo.SimulateClick();
Console.ReadLine();
}
public void SimulateClick()
{
buttonStart_Click(null, null);
}
private async void buttonStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
var tasks = new List<Task>();
for (var i = 0; i < 36; i++)
{
var taskId = i;
var t = Task.Factory.StartNew((() =>
{
Console.WriteLine($"Starting Task ({taskId})");
for (var ii = 0; ii < 200000; ii++)
{
Task.Delay(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(500)).Wait();
var s1 = new string(' ', taskId);
var s2 = new string(' ', 36-taskId);
Console.WriteLine($"Updating Task {s1}X{s2} ({taskId})");
}
Console.Write($"Done ({taskId})");
}),TaskCreationOptions.LongRunning);
tasks.Add(t);
}
await Task.WhenAll(tasks);
Console.WriteLine("Done, enabld UI controls");
}
}
}

how to capture value returned from method in thread execution c#

Thread[] threads = new Thread[12];
int temp;
for (int i = 0; i < threads.Length - 1; i++)
{
temp = i;
threads[temp] = new Thread(new ThreadStart(()=> test(test1[temp],"start", temp)));
threads[temp].Start();
//threads[temp].Join();
}
for(int i=0; i<threads.Length-1; i++)
{
threads[i].Join();
}
//Need to capture the response returned from method executed"test1" in thread.

You could use a Task<T> (if you're on .NET 4+), which has a return value. You could also use events to get notified when the thread is done with doing whatever it does and get the returned value that way.

I would use Microsoft's Reactive Framework for this. NugGet "Rx-Main".
var query =
Observable
.Range(0, 12)
.SelectMany(n => Observable
.Start(() => new
{
n,
r = test(test1[n], "start", n)
}))
.ToArray()
.Select(xs => xs
.OrderBy(x => x.n)
.Select(x => x.r)
.ToArray());
query.Subscribe(rs =>
{
/* do something with the results */
});

You could start the thread using another ctor overload where you can start the thread and pass an object to that thread. The thread would then save the result in a field of that object. The main thread could after the call to Join retrieve the results from all those objects. You could have an array of 12 objects each of them passed to one thread. Or you could have an array of 12 classes, each class encapsulating one thread and the corresponding object that wraps the result:
public class ThreadResult
{
public int Result {get; set;}
}
However, today you have better choices than raw threads. Take a look at TPL (Task Parallel Library) and async / await in C#.

You can also use a shared state, in this case you have to lock every access to the shared objects inside the thread method:
Thread[] threads = new Thread[12];
int temp;
string msg = "";
List<string> results = new List<string>();
for (int i = 0; i < threads.Length; i++)
{
temp = i;
threads[temp] = new Thread(() =>
{
lock (results)
{
lock (msg)
{
msg = "Hello from Thread " + Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId;
results.Add(msg);
}
}
});
threads[temp].Start();
}
for (int i = 0; i < threads.Length; i++)
{
threads[i].Join();
}

Long running Process using Task objects and a Monitor Thread

I am attempting to monitor a long running process. Right now the process created new Task objects for all the small pieces, but I need some way to monitor their progress to send status to a UI.
ExecutionContext ctx = new ExecutionContext()
{
Result = result,
LastCount = result.Values.Count
};
Task t = Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
{
foreach (var dataSlice in dataObjects)
{
Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
{
// Do Some Work
}, TaskCreationOptions.AttachedToParent);
}
});
ctx.ParentTask = t;
Task monitor = Task.Factory.StartNew( () =>
{
ctx.LastCount = ctx.Result.Values.Count;
}, TaskCreationOptions.LongRunning);
My problem, or perhaps question is, if I force my monitor task to wait (via a SpinWait or Sleep) will it possibly lock part of the Tasks created above it? I need the monitor to check status every now and then, but I don't want it's wait condition to kill another task that needs to run.
EDIT:
So I found an interesting approach that's very similar to what Hans suggested in the comments below. It comes in two pieces. One Task to happen multiple times in the middle, and one completion task to do the final clean-up. Still in testing, but it looks promising.
Here's what it looks like:
Task t = new Task(() =>
{
int i = 0;
for (int j = 0; j < 200; j++)
{
foreach (var session in sessions)
{
Task work = action.Invoke(SomeParameter);
if (i == 50 || i == 0)
{
work.ContinueWith(task => Task.Factory.StartNew(UpdateAction));
i = 1;
}
else
{
i++;
}
}
}
});
ctx.ParentTask = t;
t.ContinueWith(CompletionAction => Task.Factory.StartNew(() => CompleteExecution(SomeParameter)));
t.Start();

When All Threads Are Complete

This is my first real attempt at using multithreading, I want to know how I can tell when all of my tasks groups are done running:
for (int i = 0; i < taskGroups.Count(); i++) {
ThreadStart t = delegate { RunThread(taskGroups[i]); };
new Thread(t).Start();
}
if(allThreadsComplete){ //???
}
Any help would be much appreciated
Addendum:
ThreadStart[] threads = new ThreadStart[taskGroups.Count()];
for (int i = 0; i < taskGroups.Count(); i++) {
threads[i] = new ThreadStart[]
threads[i] = delegate { RunThread(taskGroups[i]); };
new Thread(t).Start();
}
bool threadsComplete = false;
while(!threadsComplete){
for(int i=0;i<taskGroups.Count();i++){
if(threads[i].State == complete)
threadsComplete = true;
}
}

You need to store all your threads, and then call Thread.Join().
Something like this:
List<Thread> threads = new List<Thread>();
for (int i = 0; i < taskGroups.Count(); i++) {
int temp = i; //This fixes the issue with i being shared
Thread thread = new Thread(() => RunThread(taskGroups[temp]));
threads.Add(thread);
thread.Start();
}
foreach (var thread in threads) {
thread.Join();
}

If you're using 3.5 then you can write your own CountdownEvent, if you're using 4.0 then you can use the built in CountdownEvent to do something like this:
CountdownEvent = new CountdownEvent(taskGroups.Count());
for (int i = 0; i < taskGroups.Count(); i++)
{
int item = i; // copy i locally
ThreadStart t = delegate
{
RunThread(taskGroups[item]);
latch.Signal();
};
new Thread(t).Start();
}
latch.Wait();
The latch.Wait() will cause your code to block until the threads have all finished. Furthermore, you might want to change the way you start your thread a bit:
CountdownEvent = new CountdownEvent(taskGroups.Count());
for (int i = 0; i < taskGroups.Count(); i++)
{
int item = i; // copy i locally
Thread t = new Thread(()=>
{
RunThread(taskGroups[item]);
latch.Signal();
});
t.IsBackground = true;
t.Start();
}
latch.Wait();
Note that I'm setting the thread to background: this your application from hanging when exit and not all threads have finished (i.e. prevents ghost or daemon threads).

You can use Thread.Join to make sure that each individual thread has finished running.

You can add public static integer field to the main thread, in each child thread increase it by one when it's completed then in the main thread wait (in a loop) until that variable is equal to the taskGroups.Count().

First of all consider switching to the new asynchronous pattern using Task.
Anyway if you want to wait for all your threads you can call Thread.Join:
var threads = new List<Thread>();
for (int i = 0; i < taskGroups.Count(); i++) {
ThreadStart t = delegate { RunThread(taskGroups[i]); };
var thread = new Thread(t);
threads.Add(thread);
thread.Start();
}
threads.ForEach(a => a.Join());
Remember that you can also pass a timeout parameter that will wait until the thread finishes only if it doesn't takes more than the time you passed in.

You can check the ThreadState property of each Thread object.