progressBar separate thread - c#

I have question about progressbar show value.
I have this main thread
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
progress prog = new progress();
progress.progressEvent += new progress.progressEventHandler(progressEvent);
for(int i=0;i<100;i++)
{
Thread.Sleep(100);
prog.incA();
}
}
void progressEvent(object sender)
{
if (progressBar1.InvokeRequired)
{
//Tady mi to caka az kym nedobehne cyklus for a pak zacne tohleto fungovat
progressBar1.Invoke(new ChangeProgressBarValue(ProgressStep));
}
else
{
ProgressStep();
}
}
public void ProgressStep()
{
progressBar1.PerformStep();
}
public class progress
{
private ThreadStart ts;
private Thread th;
private bool status = true;
public delegate void progressEventHandler(object sender);
public static event progressEventHandler progressEvent;
private int b,a = 0;
public progress()
{
ts=new ThreadStart(go);
th = new Thread(ts);
th.IsBackground = true;
th.Start();
}
public void incA()
{
a++;
if(a==100)
status = false;
}
private void go()
{
while (status)
{
if (a != b)
{
b = a;
if (progressEvent != null)
progressEvent(this);
}
}
th.Abort();
}
}
and my problem is IF start main thread and call IncA this method call event and in event is progressbar invoke
and this invoke waiting to end main thread FOR
why waiting?
thx

Your loop in the main thread is preventing "paint" events from happening. Since you are calling your progress bar's function from withing that thread, you will never see the updates.
You need to move the code to do the incrementing to another thread entirely.
Here is a sample of what you want to do using a Button, a BackgroundWorker, and a ProgressBar:
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
backgroundWorker1.RunWorkerAsync();
}
private void backgroundWorker1_DoWork(object sender, System.ComponentModel.DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
for (int i = 1; i <= 100; i++)
{
backgroundWorker1.ReportProgress(i);
Thread.Sleep(100);
}
}
private void backgroundWorker1_ProgressChanged(object sender, System.ComponentModel.ProgressChangedEventArgs e)
{
this.progressBar1.Value = e.ProgressPercentage;
}
Hope this helps!

The progress bar control is a UI object, and is created on the UI thread. When you call Invoke or BeginInvoke to update it, you are asking the UI thread to do the updating.
However, the UI thread is busy - in your button CLick event handler, you have a loop which Sleep()s the thread and calls prog.IncA in a loop. So it never exits back to the main UI loop (which is what dispatches windows messages and updates the UI). Your progress bar is being updated internally, but it never gets a chance to redraw because the UI thread is "busy".
The "processing" code (that is looping and calling prog.IncA()) should not be running on the UI thread at all - you need to start it off in a separate thread and then exit your Click handler so that the UI can continue to update.
Note that this has a side effect - if your UI thread is running, then the user will be able to continue interacting with your program, and so they can click again on the button and kick off another background thread - so you have to be very careful to make sure that the user can't do anything "dangerous" in the UI while you are busy processing.
I suggest you look at some introduction-to-threading tutorials to get an idea of how to use BackgroundWorker or another mechanism for running code in a separate thread. Once you understand that, you can add a progress bar. (And note that although a progress bar sounds like the simplest thing to do, it is actually rather a difficult thing to do due to the need for the UI thread to continue running but not let the user do anything dangerous during your processing)

Related

BackgroundWorker not exiting loop

I have an BackgroundWorker:
BackgroundWorker worker;
private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
worker = new BackgroundWorker();
worker.WorkerReportsProgress = true;
worker.WorkerSupportsCancellation = true;
worker.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(worker_DoWork);
worker.ProgressChanged +=
new ProgressChangedEventHandler(worker_ProgressChanged);
worker.RunWorkerCompleted +=
new RunWorkerCompletedEventHandler(worker_RunWorkerCompleted);
}
DoWork Event
void worker_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
int percentFinished = (int)e.Argument;
while (!worker.CancellationPending && percentFinished < 100)
{
percentFinished++;
worker.ReportProgress(percentFinished);
//here I start my operation
//operation....
//operation end
}
e.Result = percentFinished;
}
Progresschanged
void worker_ProgressChanged(object sender, ProgressChangedEventArgs e)
{
progressBar1.Value = e.ProgressPercentage;
}
Completed
void worker_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
{
MessageBox.Show("Asynchroner Thread kam bis zum Wert:
"+e.Result.ToString());
btnStartEnd.Text = "Starten";
}
And finally my button:
private void btnStartEnd_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (worker.IsBusy)
{
worker.CancelAsync();
btnStartEnd.Text = "Starten";
}
else
{
if (progressBar1.Value == progressBar1.Maximum)
{
progressBar1.Value = progressBar1.Minimum;
}
worker.RunWorkerAsync(progressBar1.Value);
btnStartEnd.Text = "Stoppen";
}
}
This code works but I get a loop for my operations until the percentage is 100, so the operation starts 100 times and so takes 100 times longer.
The goal should be that the operation only starts one time and the percentage counts from 1-100.
Maybe I understand something wrong, but how does the worker know how far the operation is done? That value should be send to the progress bar for visualisation.
Normally you won’t add the loop inside the DoWork method
If you want to load for example 100 files from the file system and report the progress it could look like that:
private void bw_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
BackgroundWorker worker = sender as BackgroundWorker;
for(int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
{
// Load file and do something with the content
...
// Report the progress which causes the ProgressChanged event to be fired
// And update progressbar with the UI thread
worker.ReportProgress(i);
}
}
If you only have one long running operation that needs to be executed inside the DoWork method it needs to be executed asynchronously
Here is one example how you could call an action asynchronously in .NET:
Action action = () =>
{
for(int i = 0; i <100; i++)
{
Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Step {0} of long running operation", i));
Thread.Sleep(1000);
}
};
var r = action.BeginInvoke(null, null);
while(!r.IsCompleted)
{
Console.WriteLine("Waiting...");
Thread.Sleep(100);
}
However in .NET there are many more ways to do it. See for example:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj152938(v=vs.110).aspx for
Async patterns in .NET
http://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/library/hh191443.aspx for Async
programming with await/async (new in .NET 4.5)
Maybe I understand something wrong, but how does the worker know how far the operation is done? That value should be send to the progress bar for visualisation.
The BackgroundWorker class doesn't know anything about your operations and about its progress. It's your job to determine when to report the progress.
In general the workflow for a background worker looks like this:
UI thread calls RunWorkerAsync.
DoWork event handler is called on a different thread. During the event handler you can report progress using the ReportProgress method
If you report a progress then the ProgressChanged event handler is called on the UI thread. Here you can update a progress bar for example.
When your event handler for the DoWork event exits the RunWorkerComplete event is raised.
Now why does every example for the BackgroundWorker has a for-loop? Because it's very easy to write, and measuring progress for a for-loop is trivial. Unfortunately this quite often isn't useful for different kind of operations.
If your long running operation processes N files then it's pretty obvious that you can update the progress bar after every item by 1/N. That's what the for-loop example does.
But if you only have one long running operation then you simply don't have any chance to get the progress unless the operation itself supports reporting it or if you can somehow estimate the progress.
The BackgroundWorker can't magically give a long running operation a progress bar. It only enables you to run the operation in the background.

Why main thread gets hanged when background worker is executing

I have simple winforms application where i have button. on button click i am doing something like this
private void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
BackgroundWorker bw_Convert = new BackgroundWorker();
bw_Convert.WorkerReportsProgress = true;
bw_Convert.DoWork += bw_Convert_DoWork;
bw_Convert.RunWorkerCompleted += bw_Convert_RunWorkerCompleted;
bw_Convert.ProgressChanged += bw_Convert_ProgressChanged;
bw_Convert.WorkerReportsProgress = true;
bw_Convert.RunWorkerAsync();
}
I have following code for background worker
public void bw_Convert_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
for (int i = 0; i <= 1000000; i++)
{
bw_Convert.ReportProgress((100 * (i) / 1000));
}
}
public void bw_Convert_ProgressChanged(object sender, ProgressChangedEventArgs e)
{
progressBarControl1.EditValue = e.ProgressPercentage.ToString();
}
By doing this. Why my Main Thread gets hanged as i m processing the things in Background Worker.
Because ReportProgress event handler is executed on main thread:
The call to the ReportProgress method is asynchronous and returns
immediately. The ProgressChanged event handler executes on the thread
that created the BackgroundWorker.
Thus you are constantly calling ReportProgress from background thread, it makes your main thread constantly busy handling this event.
If you have a lot of quick work to do in background, then try to report only each n-th iteration instead of raising event on each iteration:
public void bw_Convert_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
for (int i = 0; i <= 1000000; i++)
{
if (i % 10000 == 0)
bw_Convert.ReportProgress(i);
// do something
}
}
The ProgressChanged event is executed on the UI thread so you can access the controls.
The code inside your background worker is executing in a very short amount of time, leading to many events being raised in a short period of time, making the code react as if it would execute completely on the UI thread.
In fact, most of the work is being done in the UI thread, because updating a control on the screen is much more work than the loop iterations.

C# Asynchronous Task for a Stock Ticker

I've been trying to learn more about asynchronous tasks and threading but not making a ton of headway.
I'm trying to load an "Engine" type of thread that will run in the background upon launch and be able to access the UI Thread to update variables, without hanging the UI Thread.
In the below code, Engine is called, and a Ticker object is created which holds the current value of (Litecoin/USD) called Last, also holds several other values that would be useful. This code successfully assigns the current value to label1.text. I don't necessarily need code but what approach would I take to create a ticker object in the background every second and update the UI thread with each new Ticker objects values.
Is this a good case for a background worker?
private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Engine();
}
private void Engine()
{
Ticker ltcusd = BtceApi.GetTicker(BtcePair.LtcUsd);
label1.Text = "LTC/USD:" + ltcusd.Last;
}
EDIT:
If I do the following, label1 throws an InvalidOperationException due to a Cross-thread operation attempt (label1 in the UI thread).
private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
var t = Task.Factory.StartNew(() => Engine());
t.Start();
}
private void Engine()
{
while (true)
{
Thread.Sleep(1000);
Ticker ltcusd = BtceApi.GetTicker(BtcePair.LtcUsd);
label1.Text = "LTC/USD: " + ltcusd.Last;
}
}
Using async/await, the simplest way of getting an "asynchronous" sort of API is to invoke a new task. It's not great, but it'll make things simpler. I would probably create a new class which basically wrapped all the BtceApi methods in tasks:
public class BtceApiAsync
{
public Task<Ticker> GetTickerAsync(BtcePair pair)
{
return Task.Run(() => BtceApi.GetTicker(pair));
}
// etc
}
Then you can use a timer which fires once per second, which will start off a new task and update the UI appropriately:
// Keep a field of type System.Windows.Forms.Timer
timer = new Timer();
timer.Interval = 1000;
timer.Tick += DisplayTicker;
timer.Start();
...
private async void DisplayTicker(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Ticker ticker = await BtceApiAsync.GetTickerAsync(BtcePair.LtcUsd);
label1.Text = "LTC/USD: " + ltcusd.Last;
}
Note that this doesn't mean the screen will be updated once per second... there will be a new task started once per second, and as soon as each task completes, the UI will be updated.
The use of await here - from an async method started on the UI thread - means you don't need to worry about using the UI; the whole async method will execute on the UI thread, even though the fetch itself happens in a different thread.
You can try ContinueWith to update the Label at the end of the task. If you want to update it event before the task ends then raise an event which is registered by on the UI thread. The event can then update the label.
I suppose this is Windows Forms. You could do it "old school style" and set the label text on the UI thread, and you can do that by passing delegate to the BeginInvoke or Invoke method.
private void Engine()
{
while (true)
{
Thread.Sleep(1000);
Ticker ltcusd = BtceApi.GetTicker(BtcePair.LtcUsd);
UpdateText("LTC/USD: " + ltcusd.Last);
}
}
private void UpdateText(string text)
{
//Inspect if the method is executing on background thread
if (InvokeRequired)
{
//we are on background thread, use BeginInvoke to pass delegate to the UI thread
BeginInvoke(new Action(()=>UpdateText(text)));
}
else
{
//we are on UI thread, it's ok to change UI
label1.Text = text;
}
}

C# windows form progress bar with background worker

I am attempting to add a progress bar in my c# excel add in. The progress bar appears but it does not indicate any progress until the function is finished executing.
These are the functions in the Windows Form Class:
public void backgroundWorker1_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
{
Thread.Sleep(100);
backgroundWorker1.ReportProgress(i); //run in back thread
}
}
public void backgroundWorker1_ProgressChanged(object sender, ProgressChangedEventArgs e) //call back method
{
progressBar1.Value = e.ProgressPercentage;
}
public void backgroundWorker1_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e) //call back method
{
progressBar1.Value = progressBar1.Maximum;
}
This is how I call the function from the add in button:
private void buttonClicked(object sender, RibbonControlEventArgs e)
{
AddInPlanView.Form1 pBar = new AddInPlanView.Form1();
pBar.Visible = true;
pBar.backgroundWorker1.WorkerReportsProgress = true;
pBar.backgroundWorker1.ProgressChanged += new System.ComponentModel.ProgressChangedEventHandler(pBar.backgroundWorker1_ProgressChanged);
pBar.backgroundWorker1.DoWork += new System.ComponentModel.DoWorkEventHandler(pBar.backgroundWorker1_DoWork);
pBar.backgroundWorker1.RunWorkerCompleted += new System.ComponentModel.RunWorkerCompletedEventHandler(pBar.backgroundWorker1_RunWorkerCompleted);
pBar.backgroundWorker1.RunWorkerAsync();
FUNCTIONTORUN();
pBar.Visible = false;
}
How should I change this so that the progress bar will not stop working during the execution of FUNCTIONTORUN()? The progress bar is initialized using the Visual Studio designer. The name of the progressbar object in the form class is progressbar1.
Thank YOU!
The DoWork event for your progress bar should be (or contain) FUNCTIONTORUN(). FUNCTIONTORUN() should use the ReportProgress method.
What does FUNCTIONTORUN do? It is very likely blocking the UI thread, causing your updates to the progress bar to not be seen until it returns. More than likely, FUNCTIONTORUN needs to run in a background worker, and have it periodically report progress, and that's where you'd update the progress bar.
I would like to expand on the following statement. Matt Greer can correct me if I am wrong.
What does FUNCTIONTORUN do? It is very likely blocking the UI thread,
causing your updates to the progress bar to not be seen until it
returns. More than likely, FUNCTIONTORUN needs to run in a background
worker, and have it periodically report progress, and that's where
you'd update the progress bar.
What I believe he means by this is you need to update progressBar1.Value within
FUNCTIONTORUN(); you can still use a similar method.

Restart background worker

Is there a way to directly "restart" a background worker?
Calling CancelAsync() followed by RunWorkerAsync() clearly won't do it as their names imply.
Background info:
I have a background worker which calculates a total in my .net 2.0 Windows Forms app.
Whenever the user modifies any value which is part of this total I'd like to restart the background worker in case it would be running so that directly the latest values are considered.
The backgriound work itself does not do any cancleing.
When you call bgw.CancelAsync it sets a flag on the background worker that you need to check yourself in the DoWork handler.
something like:
bool _restart = false;
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
bgw.CancelAsync();
_restart = true;
}
private void bgw_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
for (int i = 0; i < 300; i++)
{
if (bgw.CancellationPending)
{
break;
}
//time consuming calculation
}
}
private void bgw_WorkComplete(object sender, eventargs e) //no ide to hand not sure on name/args
{
if (_restart)
{
bgw.RunWorkerAsync();
_restart = false;
}
}
There are a couple of options, it all depends on how you want to skin this cat:
If you want to continue to use BackgroundWorker, then you need to respect the model that has been established, that is, one of "progress sensitivity". The stuff inside DoWork is clearly required to always be aware of whether or not the a pending cancellation is due (i.e., there needs to be a certain amount of polling taking place in your DoWork loop).
If your calculation code is monolithic and you don't want to mess with it, then don't use BackgroundWorker, but rather fire up your own thread--this way you can forcefully kill it if needs be.
You can hook the change event handler for the controls in which the values are changed and do the following in the handler:
if(!bgWrkr.IsBusy)
//start worker
else if(!bgWrkr.CancellationPending)
bgWrkr.CancelAsync();
Hope it helps you!
I want to leave my requests running, but no longer care about the results. I override the value of the background worker (my busy spinner is using the isBusy flag).
private void SearchWorkerCreate() {
this.searchWorker = new BackgroundWorker();
this.searchWorker.DoWork += this.SearchWorkerWork;
this.searchWorker.RunWorkerCompleted += this.SearchWorkerFinish;
}
private void SearchWorkerStart(string criteria){
if(this.searchWorker.IsBusy){
this.SearchWorkerCreate();
}
this.searchWorker.RunWorkerAsync(criteria);
this.OnPropertyChanged(() => this.IsBusy);
this.OnPropertyChanged(() => this.IsIdle);
}
May this method help someone... I've created a function to reset the backgroundworker in one method. I use it for task to do periodically.
By creating a Task, the backgroundworker is can be stopped with the CancelAsync and restarted inside the Task. Not making a Task wil start the backgroundworker again before it is cancelled, as the OP describes.
The only requirement is that your code runs through some loop, which checks the CancellationPending every period of time (CheckPerMilliseconds).
private void ResetBackgroundWorker()
{
backgroundWorker.CancelAsync();
Task taskStart = Task.Run(() =>
{
Thread.Sleep(CheckPerMilliseconds);
backgroundWorker.RunWorkerAsync();
});
}
Inside the backgroundworker I use a for-loop that checks the CancellationPending.
private void BackgroundWorker_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
BackgroundWorker worker = sender as BackgroundWorker;
while(true)
{
if (backgroundWorker.CancellationPending)
{
return;
}
//Do something you want to do periodically.
for (int i = 0; i < minutesToDoTask * 60; i++)
{
if (backgroundWorker.CancellationPending)
{
return;
}
Thread.Sleep(CheckPerMilliseconds);
}
}
}

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