Develop Reference

Foreground services and repetitive tasks which need to be executed on time

I'm developing an app which basically performs some tasks on timer tick (in this case - searching for beacons) and sends results to the server. My goal was to create an app which does its job constantly in the background. Fortunately, I'm using logging all over the code, so when we started to test it we found that sometime later the timer's callback wasn't being called on time. There were some pauses which obviously had been caused by standby and doze mode. At that moment I was using a background service and System.Threading.Timer. Then, after some research, I rewrote the services to use Alarm Manager + Wake locks, but the pauses were still there. The next try was to make the service foreground and use it with a Handler to post delayed tasks and everything seemed to be fine while the device was connected to the computer. When the device is not connected to a charger those pauses are here again. The interesting thing is that we cannot actually predict this behavior. Sometimes it works perfectly fine and sometimes not. And this is really strange because the code to schedule it is pretty simple and straightforward:
...
private int scanThreadsCount = 0;
private Android.OS.Handler handler = new Android.OS.Handler();
private bool LocationInProgress
{
get { return Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref scanThreadsCount, 0, 0) != 0; }
}
public void ForceLocation()
{
if (!LocationInProgress) DoLocation();
}
private async void DoLocation()
{
Interlocked.Increment(ref scanThreadsCount);
Logger.Debug("Location is started");
try
{
// Location...
}
catch (Exception e)
{
Logger.Error(e, "Location cannot be performed due to an unexpected error");
}
finally
{
if (LocationInterval > 0)
{
# It's here. The location interval is 60 seconds
# and the service is running in the foreground!
# But in the screenshot we can see the delay which
# sometimes reaches 10 minutes or even more
handler.PostDelayed(ForceLocation, LocationInterval * 1000);
}
Logger.Debug("Location has been finished");
Interlocked.Decrement(ref scanThreadsCount);
}
}
...
Actually it can be ok, but I need that service to do its job strictly on time, but the callback is being called with a few seconds delay or a few minutes and that's not acceptable.
The Android documentation says that foreground services are not restricted by standby and doze mode, but I cannot really find the cause of that strange behavior. Why is the callback not being called on time? Where do these 10 minutes pauses come from? It's pretty frustrating because I cannot move further unless I have the robust basis. Does anybody know the reason of such a strange behavior or any suggestions how I can achieve the callback to be executed on time?
P.S. The current version of the app is here. I know, it's quite boring trying to figure out what is wrong with one's code, but there are only 3 files which have to do with that problem:
~/Services/BeaconService.cs
~/Services/BeaconServiceScanFunctionality.cs
~/Services/BeaconServiceSyncFunctionality.cs
The project was provided for those who would probably want to try it in action and figure it out by themselves.
Any help will be appreciated!
Thanks in advance

Writing to textbox inside an unselected tab

I have a program that can read and write on serial, GPIB, USB, and Ethernet. It has a tab for each method of communication with a textbox inside that displays communication on the port. One of the tabs is listed as All Comms and that text box has data from all communication methods. I am currently working on the serial port portion of the code and my program keeps freezing. Half the time I run my code it functions without issue writing to both tabs. The other half it freezes up when it tries to write to the text box inside the tab that is not selected(found by stepping through the code a line at a time).
I pulled the text boxes outside the tab control and this fixes the freezing issue. When the program freezes it does not display an error message and does not crash so no crash report(left it running over the weekend and it never finished crashing).
I would think that I need to select the other tab and then write to it, but why would the code work correctly half the time I run it?
Image of the program
private void serialPort1_DataReceived(object sender, System.IO.Ports.SerialDataReceivedEventArgs e)
{
rxString = rxString + serialPort1.ReadExisting();
if (rxString == "\b")
{
//Removes 1 character when backspace is the key pressed
rxSerialTextBox.ReadOnly = false;
rxSerialTextBox.Select(rxSerialTextBox.TextLength - 1, rxSerialTextBox.TextLength);
rxSerialTextBox.SelectedText = String.Empty;
rxSerialTextBox.ReadOnly = true;
rxString = "";
}
while (rxString.Length != 0)
{
try
{
while (rxString.Length != 0)
{
if (rxString.IndexOf("\r\n") == 0)
{
//Adds a newline when newline is the next characters in the string
rxString = rxString.Substring(rxString.IndexOf("\r\n") + 2);
rxAllCommsTextBox.AppendText(Environment.NewLine);
rxSerialTextBox.AppendText(Environment.NewLine);
}
//Adds a new character to the text box
rxAllCommsTextBox.AppendText(rxString.Substring(0, 1));
rxSerialTextBox.AppendText(rxString.Substring(0, 1));
rxString = rxString.Substring(1, rxString.Length - 1);
}
}
catch
{
//rxString = "";
}
}
}

A quck look at the SerialPort.DataReceived event documentation brings into attention the following Remarks section paragraph:
The DataReceived event is raised on a secondary thread when data is received from the SerialPort object. Because this event is raised on a secondary thread, and not the main thread, attempting to modify some elements in the main thread, such as UI elements, could raise a threading exception. If it is necessary to modify elements in the main Form or Control, post change requests back using Invoke, which will do the work on the proper thread.
According to this, your code that touches UI elements (text boxes) inside that event handler is incorrect. What the documentation doesn't say is that when you do so, the behavior is undefined - sometimes it may work, another time hang, yet another time throw exception.
So, instead of asking why your incorrect code sometimes work, you'd better concentrate on making it correct, and only then if something is not working, ask why and seek for a solution.
P.S. I'm not going to address how the concrete issue can be solved - there are a tons of posts, explanations and examples of how to marshal the calls to the UI thread, and in that regard there is nothing special in your case.

It was a little confusing your question ...
you can try, it is understood correctly, try to keep the value you want to assign the memory context, and assign the value based on another type of iteration.
At the moment the application freezes, which shows the breakpoint? The expected behavior does it work?
I would try a configuration object, such as a list, with various configurations, and certain state, the amount you need to pass the list to the tabcontrol. Obviously, it needs to check what's not working and why is not ...

FTP poller occasionally hangs on file download until restart

I have a Windows service that polls a remote FTP server every three seconds. It checks a directory for files, downloads any files present, and deletes those files once downloaded. Average file size is 10 KB, and rarely they will go up to the 100 KB range.
Occasionally (I have noticed no pattern), the WebClient will throw the following:
System.Net.WebException: The operation has timed out.
at System.Net.WebClient.OpenRead(Uri address)
It will do this for one or more files, usually whatever files are in the remote directory at that time. It will continue to do so indefinitely, churning on the "stuck" files at each polling interval. The bizarre part is that when I stop/start the Windows service, the "stuck" files download perfectly and the polling/downloading works again for long stretches of time. This is bizarre because I download like this:
private object _pollingLock = new object();
public void PollingTimerElapsed(object sender, ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
if(Monitor.TryEnter(_pollingLock);
{
//FtpHelper lists content of files in directory
...
foreach(var file in files)
{
using(var client = new WebClient())
{
client.Proxy = null;
using(var data = client.OpenRead(file.Uri)
{
//Use data stream to write file locally
...
}
}
//FtpHelper deletes the file
...
}
}
//Release the _pollingLock inside a finally
}
I would assume that a new connection is opened and closed for each file (unless .NET is doing something behind the scenes). If a file download had an issue, it would get a fresh retry on the next polling interval (in 3 sec). Why would a service restart make things work?
I've begun to suspect that the issue has something to do with caching (file or connection). Recently I tried going into Internet Explorer and clearing the cache. Approximately 30 sec or so later, all the files downloaded with no service restart. But, the next batch of files to arrive all got hung up again. I might try adding a line like this:
client.CachePolicy = new RequestCachePolicy(RequestCacheLevel.NoCacheNoStore);
or try disabling KeepAlives, but I want to get some opinions before I start trying random stuff.
So: What is causing the occasional timeouts? Why does restarting the service work? Why did clearing the cache work?
Update
I made the cache policy and keep alive change mentioned above about two weeks ago. I just now got my first timeout since then. It appears to have improved frequency, but alas, it is still happening.
Update
As requested, this is how I am kicking off the Timer:
_pollingTimer.AutoReset = true;
_pollingTimer.Elapser += PollingTimerElapsed;
_pollingTimer.Interval = 10000;
_pollingTimer.Enabled = true;`

Looks like you are kicking off your processing using the System.Timers.Timer.Elapsed event.
One gotcha that I found is that if your Elapsed event takes longer to execute than the timer interval, your event can be called again from another thread before it has finished executing.
This is specifically mentioned in the docs:
If the SynchronizingObject property is null, the Elapsed event is
raised on a ThreadPool thread. If the processing of the Elapsed event
lasts longer than Interval, the event might be raised again on another
ThreadPool thread. In this situation, the event handler should be
reentrant.
Assuming you are indeed using a vanilla timer with AutoReset=true (its on by default), first thing to do would be address this potential issue. You can use a SynchronizingObject, alternatively you can do something like this:
//setup code
Timer myTimer = new Timer(30000);
myTimer.AutoReset = false;
....
//Elapsed handler
public void PollingTimerElapsed(object sender, ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
//do what you currently do
...
//when finished, kick off the timer again
myTimer.Start();
}
Either way, the main thing is to ensure that your code doesn't accidentally get called simultaneously by multiple threads - if that happens there's a good chance that occasionally you'll have one thread trying to download something from the site while another thread is simultaneously deleting the file.
The things that you mentioned e.g. it only happens occasionally, that normally file sizes are small, that its fixed by a restart, etc. would point me in the direction of this being the issue.

Force loop containing asynchronous task to maintain sequence

Something tells me this might be a stupid question and I have in fact approached my problem from the wrong direction, but here goes.
I have some code that loops through all the documents in a folder - The alphabetical order of these documents in each folder is important, this importance is also reflected in the order the documents are printed. Here is a simplified version:
var wordApp = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application();
foreach (var file in Directory.EnumerateFiles(folder))
{
fileCounter++;
// Print file, referencing a previously instantiated word application object
wordApp.Documents.Open(...)
wordApp.PrintOut(...)
wordApp.ActiveDocument.Close(...)
}
It seems (and I could be wrong) that the PrintOut code is asynchronous, and the application sometimes gets into a situation where the documents get printed out of order. This is confirmed because if I step through, or place a long enough Sleep() call, the order of all the files is correct.
How should I prevent the next print task from starting before the previous one has finished?
I initially thought that I could use a lock(someObject){} until I remembered that they are only useful for preventing multiple threads accessing the same code block. This is all on the same thread.
There are some events I can wire into on the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application object: DocumentOpen, DocumentBeforeClose and DocumentBeforePrint
I have just thought that this might actually be a problem with the print queue not being able to accurately distinguish lots of documents that are added within the same second. This can't be the problem, can it?
As a side note, this loop is within the code called from the DoWork event of a BackgroundWorker object. I'm using this to prevent UI blocking and to feedback the progress of the process.

Your event-handling approach seems like a good one. Instead of using a loop, you could add a handler to the DocumentBeforeClose event, in which you would get the next file to print, send it to Word, and continue. Something like this:
List<...> m_files = Directory.EnumerateFiles(folder);
wordApp.DocumentBeforeClose += ProcessNextDocument;
...
void ProcessNextDocument(...)
{
File file = null;
lock(m_files)
{
if (m_files.Count > 0)
{
file = m_files[m_files.Count - 1];
m_files.RemoveAt(m_files.Count - 1);
}
else
{
// Done!
}
}
if (file != null)
{
PrintDocument(file);
}
}
void PrintDocument(File file)
{
wordApp.Document.Open(...);
wordApp.Document.PrintOut(...);
wordApp.ActiveDocument.Close(...);
}

The first parameter of Application.PrintOut specifies whether the printing should take place in the background or not. By setting it to false it will work synchronously.

Process.Kill() related crashes

Or not!
I have a fairly simple application timer program. The program will launch a user selected (from file dialog) executable and then terminate the process after the user specified number of minutes. During testing I found that a crash occurs when I call the Process.Kill() method and the application is minimized to the system tray.
The executable in question is Frap.exe which I use frequently and is the reason I wrote the app timer in the first place. I always minimize fraps to the tray, and this is when the crash occurs.
My use of Kill() is straight forward enough...
while (true)
{
//keep checking if timer expired or app closed externally (ie. by user)
if (dtEndTime <= DateTime.Now || p.HasExited)
{
if (!p.HasExited)
p.Kill();
break;
}
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(500);
}
In searching for alternatives methods to close an external application programmatically, I found only Close() and Kill() (CloseMainWindow is not helpful to me at all). I tried using Close(), which works providing the application is minimized the tray. If the app is minimized, Close() doesn't cause a crash but the app remains open and active.
One thing I noticed in a few posts posts regarding closing external applications was the comment: "Personally I'd try to find a more graceful way of shutting it down though." made in THIS thread found here at stack flow (no offense to John). Thing is, I ran across comments like that on a few sites, with no attempt at what a graceful or elegant (or crash-free!!) method might be.
Any suggestions?
The crash experienced is not consistant and I've little to offer as to details. I am unable to debug using VS2008 as I get message - cant debug crashing application (or something similar), and depending on what other programs I have running at the time, when the Kill() is called some of them also crash (also programs only running in the tray) so I'm thinking this is some sort of problem specifically related to the system tray.

Is it possible that your code is being executed in a way such that the Kill() statement could sometimes be called twice? In the docs for Process.Kill(), it says that the Kill executes asynchronously. So, when you call Kill(), execution continues on your main thread. Further, the docs state that Kill will throw a Win32Exception if you call it on an app that is already in the process of closing. The docs state that you can use WaitForExit() to wait for the process to exit. What happens if you put a call to WaitForExit() immediately following the call to Kill(). The loop looks ok (with the break statement). Is it possible that you have code entering that loop twice?
If that's not the problem, maybe there is another way to catch that exception:
Try hooking the AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException event
(currentDomain is a static member)
The problem is that Kill runs asynchronously, so if it's throwing an exception, it's occurring on a different thread. That's why your exception handler doesn't catch it. Further (I think) that an unhandled async exception (which is what I believe you have) will cause an immediate unload of your application (which is what is happening).
Edit: Example code for hooking the UnhandledExceptionEvent
Here is a simple console application that demonstrates the use of AppDomain.UnhandledException:
using System;
public class MyClass
{
public static void Main()
{
System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException += MyExceptionHandler;
System.Threading.ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(DoWork);
Console.ReadLine();
}
private static void DoWork(object state)
{
throw new ApplicationException("Test");
}
private static void MyExceptionHandler(object sender, System.UnhandledExceptionEventArgs e)
{
// get the message
System.Exception exception = e.ExceptionObject as System.Exception;
Console.WriteLine("Unhandled Exception Detected");
if(exception != null)
Console.WriteLine("Message: {0}", exception.Message);
// for this console app, hold the window open until I press enter
Console.ReadLine();
}
}

My first thought is to put a try/catch block around the Kill() call and log the exception you get, if there is one. It might give you a clue what's wrong. Something like:
try
{
if(!p.HasExited)
{
p.Kill();
}
break;
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine(String.Format("Could not kill process {0}, exception {1}", p.ToString(), ex.ToString()));
}

I dont think I should claim this to be "THE ANSWER" but its a decent 'work around'. Adding the following to lines of code...
p.WaitForInputIdle(10000);
am.hWnd = p.MainWindowHandle;
...stopped the crashing issue. These lines were placed immediately after the Process.Start() statement. Both lines are required and in using them I opened the door to a few other questions that I will be investigating over the next few days. The first line is just an up-to 10 second wait for the started process to go 'idle' (ie. finish starting). am.hWnd is a property in my AppManagement class of type IntPtr and this is the only usage of both sides of the assignment. For lack of better explaination, these two lines are analguous to a debouncing method.
I modified the while loop only slightly to allow for a call to CloseMainWindow() which seems to be the better route to take - though if it fails I then Kill() the app:
while (true)
{
//keep checking if timer expired or app closed externally (ie. by user)
if (dtEndTime <= DateTime.Now || p.HasExited) {
try {
if (!p.HasExited) // if the app hasn't already exitted...
{
if (!p.CloseMainWindow()) // did message get sent?
{
if (!p.HasExited) //has app closed yet?
{
p.Kill(); // force app to exit
p.WaitForExit(2000); // a few moments for app to shut down
}
}
p.Close(); // free resources
}
}
catch { // blah blah }
break;
}
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(500);
}
My initial intention for getting the MainWindowHandle was to maximize/restore an app if minimized and I might implement that in the near future. I decided to see if other programs that run like Fraps (ie, a UI but mostly run in the system tray (like messanger services such as Yahoo et al.)). I tested with XFire and nothing I could do would return a value for the MainWindowHandle. Anyways, this is a serperate issue but one I found interesting.
PS. A bit of credit to JMarsch as it was his suggestion RE: Win32Exception that actually lead me to finding this work around - as unlikely as it seems it true.