Winform with Active UI and 1 Thread running in the background - winforms

Question

I have a Winforms application that calls CorelDraw via it's API and then does some work on an image before saving it. I have tried setting this using Threads, BackgroundWorker, and a class that inherited BackgroundWorker but also allow for Thread.Abort. Every way I have done the work, I continuously run into one of 2 issues. Either the thread is not run in the background, in which case I am unable to press any buttons on the form because it is frozen or the thread runs in the background but immediately stops processing anything when I hit the first call to CorelDraw.
Are there any alternative solutions? The old way we handled this was by having a watcher WinForm spawn another Process() that would do everything in CorelDraw. The process called with Process() saves important information into a .txt file for the parent process to check and if the child works on the same image for too long, the parent calls Kill() on it. So far, this has been a clunky and error prone way to do things, which is why I am looking for a better solution.

Answer 1

Designer Code:
namespace Tasks
{
partial class Form1
{
/// <summary>
/// Required designer variable.
/// </summary>
private System.ComponentModel.IContainer components = null;
/// <summary>
/// Clean up any resources being used.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="disposing">true if managed resources should be disposed; otherwise, false.</param>
protected override void Dispose(bool disposing)
{
if (disposing && (components != null))
{
components.Dispose();
}
base.Dispose(disposing);
}
#region Windows Form Designer generated code
/// <summary>
/// Required method for Designer support - do not modify
/// the contents of this method with the code editor.
/// </summary>
private void InitializeComponent()
{
this.button1 = new System.Windows.Forms.Button();
this.button2 = new System.Windows.Forms.Button();
this.SuspendLayout();
//
// button1
//
this.button1.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(41, 43);
this.button1.Name = "button1";
this.button1.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(75, 23);
this.button1.TabIndex = 0;
this.button1.Text = "button1";
this.button1.UseVisualStyleBackColor = true;
this.button1.Click += new System.EventHandler(this.button1_Click);
//
// button2
//
this.button2.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(131, 43);
this.button2.Name = "button2";
this.button2.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(75, 23);
this.button2.TabIndex = 1;
this.button2.Text = "button2";
this.button2.UseVisualStyleBackColor = true;
this.button2.Click += new System.EventHandler(this.button2_Click);
//
// Form1
//
this.AutoScaleDimensions = new System.Drawing.SizeF(6F, 13F);
this.AutoScaleMode = System.Windows.Forms.AutoScaleMode.Font;
this.ClientSize = new System.Drawing.Size(240, 116);
this.Controls.Add(this.button2);
this.Controls.Add(this.button1);
this.Name = "Form1";
this.Text = "Form1";
this.ResumeLayout(false);
}
#endregion
private System.Windows.Forms.Button button1;
private System.Windows.Forms.Button button2;
}
}
This is the form code:
using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Windows.Forms;
namespace Tasks
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
CancellationTokenSource cts;
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
MessageBox.Show(this,"This button still works :)");
}
private async void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
cts = new CancellationTokenSource();
await CreateTask();
}
private async Task CreateTask()
{
//Create a progress object that can be used within the task
Progress<string> mProgress; //you can set this to Int for ProgressBar
//Set the Action to a function that will catch the progress sent within the task
Action<string> progressTarget = ReportProgress;
//Your new Progress with the included action function
mProgress = new Progress<string>(progressTarget);
//start your task
string result = await MyProcess(mProgress);
}
private Task<string> MyProcess(IProgress<string> myProgress)
{
return Task.Run(() =>
{
//To report Progress back to your UI thread
myProgress.Report("Starting program now...");
//Start your Corel Draw program here.
Process.Start("C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\notepad.exe").WaitForExit();
//You can return the Image after your done editing it
return "Program has been closed";
}, cts.Token);
}
private void ReportProgress(string message)
{
//typically to update a progress bar or whatever
MessageBox.Show(this, message);
}
}
}
If you create async task you can run your Corel application in the background and then when it is closed it will be finish the task. I added in extra stuff in there like Progress and cts is used to cancel the task in case the parent window is closed.