Library for executing long-running actions in .NET/Windows Forms?

Question

Is there a library/framework to execute long running actions in .NET? Looking for something like this:

private void button1_Click(...)
{
  LongActionRunner.Execute((ref int total, ref int done) => {
    // i know it's not thread-safe
    total = 100;
    for(var i = 0; i <= 100; ++i) {
      done = i;
      Thread.Sleep(100); // slow
    }
  });
}

When Execute() is called, I need to display a window with progress bar. If my action throws, it should display an error message, etc.

Are there any existing solutions?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:47

3

You can use the BackgroundWorker. It is meant especially for the scenario that you presented. See here for a tutorial on how to implement a progress bar using BackgroundWorker.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:47

Community

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answered Oct 07 '11 at 14:30

jle

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And what about progress bars, error handling, etc? Just don't want to code it by myself. – Andrey Agibalov Oct 07 '11 at 14:32
you still need to add a progress bar... but backgroundworker has an event for 'progressChanged' which makes a progress bar straightforward – jle Oct 07 '11 at 14:34
@loki2302 - No matter the solution you have to code ALL of that yourself. – Security Hound Oct 07 '11 at 16:36

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 07 '11 at 16:23

0

BackroundWorker uses a thread pool thread, so you should only use it for relatively ( 1 second max ) units of work. If your operation is going to take longer than that, you should create a thread.

I, along with many others I suspect, have written this for commercial projects, but I don't know of any open source solution. I agree you need to display a dialog with a progress bar, if only to prevent the user pressing button1 twice and causing re-entrancy. As you say, you also have to handle errors and cancellation.

answered Oct 07 '11 at 16:23

Nick Butler

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Could you provide a citation for the "1 second max" claim? I have been using BackgroundWorkers that take many hours in commercial projects for many years without problems. – Dour High Arch Oct 07 '11 at 22:33
@Dour: Here's a previous question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/230003/thread-vs-threadpool Using the thread pool for long-running tasks confuses its thread management algorithms – Nick Butler Oct 08 '11 at 07:53

Library for executing long-running actions in .NET/Windows Forms?

2 Answers2