Develop Reference

C# How to detect internet connection / disconnection (with an event)?

I wrote this code that works perfectly, but I fear that ping every 2 seconds consumes too many resources or can create some problems with internet connection.
new Thread(() =>
{
if (CheckInternetConnection() == false)
{
Dispatcher.Invoke(new Action(delegate
{
//internet access lost
}));
}
else
{
Dispatcher.Invoke(new Action(delegate
{
//internet access
}));
}
Thread.Sleep(2000);
}).Start();
[DllImport("wininet.dll")]
private extern static bool InternetGetConnectedState(out int Description, int ReservedValue);
public static bool CheckInternetConnection()
{
int output = 0;
return InternetGetConnectedState(out output, 0);
}
These are two events that don't work in all occasions (only when IP or network card changes)
NetworkChange.NetworkAvailabilityChanged += NetworkChange_NetworkAvailabilityChanged
NetworkChange.NetworkAddressChanged += NetworkChange_NetworkAddressChanged;
Can someone help me ?

Note : In regaurds to your original solution
NetworkChange.NetworkAvailabilityChanged works fine, but
there are a couple of caveats: 1) it doesn't tell you if you have
Internet access, it just tells you whether there's at least one
non-loopback network adapter working, and 2) there are often extra
network adapters installed for various reasons that leave the system
in a "network is available" state, even when your main
Internet-connected adapter is disabled/unavailable - thanks to Peter Duniho
Since networking is more than just your routers or network card, and is really every hop to where ever it is you are trying to connect to at any time. The easiest and most reliable way is just ping a well known source like google, or use some sort of heart beat to one of your internet services.
The reasons this is the only reliable way is that any number of connectivity issues can occur in between you and the outside world. Even major service providers can go down.
So an IMCP ping to a known server like Google, or calling OpenRead on a WebClient are 2 valid approaches. These calls are not expensive comparatively and can be put into a light weight timer or continual task.
As for your comments you can probably signal a custom event to denote the loss of network after a certain amount of fails to be safe
To answer your question
But I fear that ping every 2 seconds consumes too many resources or
can create some problems with internet connection.
Both methods are very inexpensive in regards to CPU and network traffic, any resources used should be very minimal
Note : Just make sure you are pinging or connecting to a server with high availability, this will
allow such shenanigans and not just block you
Ping Example
using System.Net.NetworkInformation;
// Implementation
using (var ping = new Ping())
{
var reply = ping.Send("www.google.com");
if (reply != null && reply.Status != IPStatus.Success)
{
// Raise an event
// you might want to check for consistent failures
// before signalling a the Internet is down
}
}
// Or if you wanted to get fancy ping multiple sources
private async Task<List<PingReply>> PingAsync(List<string> listOfIPs)
{
Ping pingSender = new Ping();
var tasks = listOfIPs.Select(ip => pingSender.SendPingAsync(ip, 2000));
var results = await Task.WhenAll(tasks);
return results.ToList();
}
Connection Example
using System.Net;
// Implementation
try
{
using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
{
using (client.OpenRead("http://www.google.com/"))
{
// success
}
}
}
catch
{
// Raise an event
// you might want to check for consistent failures
// before signalling the Internet is down
}
Note : Both these methods have an async variant that will return a
Task and can be awaited for an Asynchronous programming pattern better suited for IO bound tasks
Resources
Ping.Send Method
Ping.SendAsync Method
WebClient.OpenRead Method
WebClient.OpenReadAsync Method

NetworkInterface.GetIsNetworkAvailable() is unreliable... since it would return true even if all the networks are not connected to internet. The best approach to check for connectivity, in my opinion, is to ping a well known and fast online resource. For example:
public static Boolean InternetAvailable()
{
try
{
using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
{
using (client.OpenRead("http://www.google.com/"))
{
return true;
}
}
}
catch
{
return false;
}
}
Anyway, those two events you are subscribing don't work the way you think... actually they check for the hardware status of your network adapters... not whether they are connected to internet or not. They have the same drawback as NetworkInterface.GetIsNetworkAvailable(). Keep on checking for connectivity into a separate thread that pings a safe source and act accordingly. Your Interop solution is excellent too.

Doing ping to public resources brings extra calls to your app and adds a dependency on that website or whatever you would use in the loop.
What if you use this method: NetworkInterface.GetIsNetworkAvailable() ?
Would it be enough for your app's purposes?
I found it here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.net.networkinformation.networkinterface.getisnetworkavailable?view=netframework-4.7.1#System_Net_NetworkInformation_NetworkInterface_GetIsNetworkAvailable

Inactivity and activity ,application idle , user-inactivity auto logout

After lot of googling and spending 4 hours I guess this is the best way to find user inactive and lock screen.
public MainWindow()
{
InitializeComponent();
var timer = new DispatcherTimer { Interval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10) };
timer.Tick += delegate
{
timer.Stop();
MessageBox.Show("Logoff trigger");
timer.Start();
};
timer.Start();
InputManager.Current.PostProcessInput += delegate(object s, ProcessInputEventArgs r)
{
if (r.StagingItem.Input is MouseButtonEventArgs || r.StagingItem.Input is KeyEventArgs)
timer.Interval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10);
};
}

If your question is, "Is there a better way to implement a session timeout?" - then I would say, possibly - this is how I do it.
A session timeout can do one of two things. It can work like an arcade game where you have a timeout duration in which to complete your tasks. Or it can monitor for inactivity and close if nothing happens.
Either way, I would wrap this functionality into a session provider - assuming MVVM is the goal, I use provider to refer to a service or data source of some sort.
The provider gets instantiated as a singleton and so exists as one instance throughout the app life cycle. I usually manage this by creating it in app.xaml. I then interact with the provider using a message framework such as MVVM light.
Once created the provider manages a thread which checks a datetime to see if it occurs in the past. If it does it issues a session over event or message. This message is picked up by your application to shut down or whatever.
If you want a finite period or time, you implement a start message which sets the monitored date time to a point in the future according to the time span you want to run. If you want an inactivity log out then you send this message from whatever user interactions you see fit to prevent log out such as input changes or ICommand executes.
I take this a stage further so my provider also issues an 'ending' message a few seconds before the timeout completes so I can display a warning - but hopefully you get the general idea.
If this sounds like what you're after then I will add in some examples, but haven't so far in case this is not what you're asking.

SqlDependency in a Windows Service not firing

I am trying to monitor a database table for changes using the SqlDependency class. Though I must be missing something. I have followed all of the examples that I see online and I have reviewed all the questions on this site. I just don't see what I am missing. Here are the initial commands that I ran on the database to enable the service broker and create the queue and service.
CREATE QUEUE ScheduleChangeQueue
GO
CREATE SERVICE ScheduleChangeService ON QUEUE ScheduleChangeQueue ([http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQL/Notifications/PostQueryNotification])
GO
ALTER DATABASE [database] SET ENABLE_BROKER
On the C# side, I have created a class that has a single static Setup method that is called to initiate the process. Here is the code for that:
public class SqlDependencyManager
{
private static bool DoesUserHavePermission()
{
var success = false;
try
{
Program.Log.Info("Retrieving SqlPermission to establish dependency...");
var clientPermission = new SqlClientPermission(System.Security.Permissions.PermissionState.Unrestricted);
// this will throw an error if the user does not have the permissions
clientPermission.Demand();
success = true;
Program.Log.Info("SqlPermission established. Continue setting up dependency.");
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Program.Log.Error(ex, "SqlPermission not able to be established.");
}
return success;
}
public static void Setup()
{
if (!DoesUserHavePermission())
{
return;
}
var connectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["ShowMakerPro"].ConnectionString;
// You must stop the dependency before starting a new one.
// You must start the dependency when creating a new one.
SqlDependency.Stop(connectionString);
SqlDependency.Start(connectionString);
using (var cn = new SqlConnection(connectionString))
{
using (var cmd = cn.CreateCommand())
{
cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
//cmd.CommandText = "SELECT MAX(LastChangeTime) FROM Schedule WHERE ChannelID IN ( SELECT ID FROM Channels WHERE Type = 1 ) AND StartTime BETWEEN (GETDATE() - 7) AND (GETDATE() + 30)";
cmd.CommandText = "SELECT LastChangeTime FROM dbo.Schedule";
cmd.Notification = null;
// Creates a new dependency for the SqlCommand. Then creates attaches handler for the notification of data changes
new SqlDependency(cmd).OnChange += SqlDependency_OnChange;
cn.Open();
cmd.ExecuteReader();
}
}
Program.Log.Info("SQL Dependency set. Now monitoring schedule table for changes.");
}
private static void SqlDependency_OnChange(object sender, SqlNotificationEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Type == SqlNotificationType.Change)
{
// this will remove the event handler since the dependency is only for a single notification
((SqlDependency)sender).OnChange -= SqlDependency_OnChange;
ScheduleOutputterService.BuildSchedules();
Program.Log.Info("SQL Dependency triggered schedule rebuild. Resetting SqlDependency to monitor for changes.");
Setup();
}
}
}
I see the code get setup ok and the OnChange method is fired once for the Subscribe but then I never see it fire after that. I manually go into the database and change the LastChangeTime field hoping that it will force the firing of the event but nothing happens.
Can someone please shed some light on where I am screwing up? I see some people saying on line that this works fine in a windows form but they are also having some problems while in a service.

So I finally figured out the answer to my question and I thought I should list all the steps I took to get to this point so someone else coming along behind me will also have another place to look for answers since I seemed unable to find all of my answers in one place.
First off, I noticed in my situation that as soon as the subscription was set the OnChange event would fire right away. That is why I put in the check for change type so I could ignore those events. It turns out that ignoring those events was not a good thing because those events were actually trying to tell me something. Doing a search on my values directed me here:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/siva/archive/2011/11/22/subtle-sqldependency-notification-issue.aspx
This was very valuable because it helped me to see that there must have been a problem with some of my options in the database. Upon further inspection I noticed that my database was set to SQL Server 2000 compatibility. That is obviously my first problem because this is a 2005 and greater feature. So I tried to change my settings to the high version. This worked ok but then I still noticed that I was receiving the same event. So then I checked my database settings and I found that they were not set to match the options required to run service broker. You can see all the required option settings here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181122(v=SQL.100).aspx
After I inspected all these and tried to do some workarounds to get the right settings all squared away the setup was still failing. But this time it was failing because the updates would not save. It turned out that the client had triggers on the table in question and it's database settings that were being used to execute the trigger were in conflict with the needed settings to run QueryNotifications.
So long story short, the client decided that they did not want to change all the triggers that were being used so they abandoned the effort. But I learned a lot about how to troubleshoot SqlDependency and ServiceBroker. Hopefully these few links I provided will be helpful for someone else. A couple more links that were very helpful were mentioned in the comments but I am going to repost them in this answer so you can have some other items to review.
http://rusanu.com/2006/06/17/the-mysterious-notification/
http://rusanu.com/2005/12/20/troubleshooting-dialogs/

C# Multithreaded application and SQL connections help

I need some advice regarding an application I wrote. The issues I am having are due to my DAL and connections to my SQL Server 2008 database not being closed, however I have looked at my code and each connection is always being closed.
The application is a multithreaded application that retrieves a set of records and while it processes a record it updates information about it.
Here is the flow:
The administrator has the ability to set the number of threads to run and how many records per thread to pull.
Here is the code that runs after they click start:
Adapters are abstractions to my DAL here is a sample of what they look like:
public class UserDetailsAdapter: IDataAdapter<UserDetails>
{
private IUserDetailFactory _factory;
public UserDetailsAdapter()
{
_factory = new CampaignFactory();
}
public UserDetails FindById(int id){
return _factory.FindById(id);
}
}
As soon as the _factory is called it processes the SQL and immediately closes the connection.
Code For Threaded App:
private int _recordsPerthread;
private int _threadCount;
public void RunDetails()
{
//create an adapter instance that is an abstration
//of the data factory layer
var adapter = new UserDetailsAdapter();
for (var i = 1; i <= _threadCount; i++)
{
//This adater makes a call tot he databse to pull X amount of records and
//set a lock filed so the next set of records that are pulled are differnt.
var details = adapter.FindTopDetailsInQueue(_recordsPerthread);
if (details != null)
{
var parameters = new ArrayList {i, details};
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(ThreadWorker, parameters);
}
else
{
break;
}
}
}
private void ThreadWorker(object parametersList)
{
var parms = (ArrayList) parametersList;
var threadCount = (int) parms[0];
var details = (List<UserDetails>) parms[1];
var adapter = new DetailsAdapter();
//we keep running until there are no records left inthe Database
while (!_noRecordsInPool)
{
foreach (var detail in details)
{
var userAdapter = new UserAdapter();
var domainAdapter = new DomainAdapter();
var user = userAdapter.FindById(detail.UserId);
var domain = domainAdapter.FindById(detail.DomainId);
//...do some work here......
adapter.Update(detail);
}
if (!_noRecordsInPool)
{
details = adapter.FindTopDetailsInQueue(_recordsPerthread);
if (details == null || details.Count <= 0)
{
_noRecordsInPool = true;
break;
}
}
}
}
The app crashes because there seem to be connection issues to the database. Looking in my log files for the DAL I am seeing this:
Timeout expired. The timeout period
elapsed prior to obtaining a
connection from the pool. This may
have occurred because all pooled
connections were in use and max pool
size was reached
When I run this in one thread it works fine. I am guessing when I runt his in multiple threads I am obviously making too many connections to the DB. Any thoughts on how I can keep this running in multiple threads and make sure the database doesn’t give me any errors.
Update:
I am thinking my issues may be deadlocks in my database. Here is the code in SQL that is running whe I get a deadlock error:
WITH cte AS (
SELECT TOP (#topCount) *
FROM
dbo.UserDetails WITH (READPAST)
WHERE
dbo.UserDetails where IsLocked = 0)
UPDATE cte
SET
IsLocked = 1
OUTPUT INSERTED.*;
I have never had issues with this code before (in other applications). I reorganzied my Indexes as they were 99% fragmented. That didn't help. I am at a loss here.

I'm confused as to where in your code connections get opened, but you probably want your data adapters to implement IDispose (making sure to close the pool connection as you leave using scope) and wrap your code in using blocks:
using (adapter = new UserDetailsAdapter())
{
for (var i = 1; i <= _threadCount; i++)
{
[..]
}
} // adapter leaves scope here; connection is implicitly marked as no longer necessary
ADO.NET uses connection pooling, so there's no need to (and it can be counter-productive to) explicitly open and close connections.

It is not clear to me how you actually connect to the database. The adapter must reference a connection.
How do you actually initialize that connection?
If you use a new adapter for each thread, you must use a new connection for each adapter.
I am not too familiar with your environment, but I am certain that you really need a lot of open connections before your DB starts complaining about it!

Well, after doing some research I found that there might be a bug in SQL server 2008 and running parallel queries. I’ll have to dig up the link where I found the discussion on this, but I ended up running this on my server:
sp_configure 'max degree of parallelism', 1;
GO
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE;
GO
This can decrease your server performance, overall, so it may not be an option for some people, but it worked great for me.
For some queries I added the MAXDOP(n) (n being the number of processors to utilize) option so they can run more efficiently. It did help a bit.
Secondly, I found out that my DAL’s Dispose method was using the GC.Suppressfinalize method. So, my finally sections were not firing in my DAL properly and not closing out my connections.
Thanks to all who gave their input!

C# timer issue

Hello I'm currently having an issue with a timer in a program I'm developing. The timer runs and calls methods which retrieve Windows Management Information from remote PC's after a set period of time and repeat this.
The first time the timer calls these all is well, however the second time, after the timer has completed its task, it loops through itself again and the third time it runs it does it 3 times etc. The for loop in the code below works fine its the timer itself.
So any help would be appareciated and if you require any further details please let me know.
Below is my code:
private void tmrStore_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
string ipAdd;
ipAdd = "127.0.0.1";
List<TblServer> Server;
WMIInfo localDB = new WMIInfo("Data Source=|DataDirectory|\\WMIInfo.sdf");
Server = localDB.TblServer.ToList();
if (Server.Count == 0)
{
}
else
{
for (int counter = 0; counter < Server.Count; counter++)
{
CPUStore cpu = new CPUStore();
cpu.Store(Server[counter].IpAdd);
HDDStore hdd = new HDDStore();
hdd.Store(Server[counter].IpAdd);
MemStore mem = new MemStore();
mem.Store(Server[counter].IpAdd);
//delete items over 24 hours old
}
}

Try disabling the timer before performing the management task, then reenabling:
tmrStore.Enabled = false;
try{
// do stuff
}finally{
tmrStore.Enabled = true;
}
The cause of the problem is probably that the body of your timer handler takes longer to execute than your Timer.Ticks value, so your timer events start to stack on top of each other.
You might also consider putting this code in a thread instead of a timer, so that it's independent of your user interface.

My first guess is that you are setting your Timer.Tick event in a place that is being executed multiple times. I would try searching for "tmrStore.Tick +=" to see where all the methods are being added to the event.

Right I've resolved the issue its because I had a class I was using to write the retrieved information into text boxes and within that I called a new instance of the form to gain access to the text boxes doh!
Thanks for your help though guys no doubt I'll be back soon for some more lol