What's the best way to abort a thread in my scenerio

Question

I'm sorry if some other people have asked a similar question before. I have a simple GUI app which upload some files to a server. I put the upload work to a seperate thread. When users want to exit the application, a event will be set to notify the thread to exit normally. Then the UI thread will wait for it. The code I used to abort the thread is as follows:-

if (mUploadThread != null) {
  if (mStopUploadEvent.WaitOne(0, true)) {
   string message = @"A normal cancellation may take a couple of minutes. Are you sure you want forcibly abort?";
   string caption = @"Warning";
   if (DialogResult.Yes == MessageBox.Show(message, caption, MessageBoxButtons.YesNo)) {
    mUploadThread.Abort();
   }

  } else {
   mStopUploadEvent.Set();
  }

  do {
   Application.DoEvents();
  } while (!mUploadThread.Join(1000));
 }

Here I want to terminate the worker thread if the user do want to. But the abort() method just doesn't work. Any suggestion is appreciated.

if you mark your worker thread as background, you don't need to abort it yourself - it won't prevent the app from exiting. — James Manning, Jul 14 '10 at 06:11

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 14 '10 at 06:01

1

Well, how are you uploading? Thread.Abort is rarely a sensible choice - it can leave you AppDomain (or even Process) in a completely messed-up state. If you are uploading via http, you could try using the async methods, allowing you to call HttpWebRequest.Abort, which is a bit more friendly.

answered Jul 14 '10 at 06:01

Marc Gravell

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fully agree on not using Thread.Abort normally, but it sounds like this is a scenario where he's about to exit the entire process anyway AFAICT. – James Manning Jul 14 '10 at 06:14
I know Abort is not a good choice, that's why I use event to notify the thread to exit first. Yes I think I should use the async http methods. Thank you. – leon Jul 14 '10 at 07:18

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

0

Btw, this is just to add to what Marc said, this answer might help understand why .Abort is not so a good choice.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

Community

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answered Jul 14 '10 at 06:09

KMån

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Which he does... `do { Application.DoEvents(); } while (!mUploadThread.Join(1000));` – Marc Gravell Jul 14 '10 at 06:39
@Marc: Missed that part; removed from my answer. – KMån Jul 14 '10 at 09:50

What's the best way to abort a thread in my scenerio

2 Answers2