I tried creating one, but the BackgroundWorker in Window1 couldn't access the ProgressBar in Window2 once the reportProgress was activated, because "The calling thread cannot access this object because a different thread owns it".
Seems there's a lower level thread model I could use, but it also seems a lot more complicated.
You just need to get the ProgressBar disptacher.
You can access the ProgressBar with:
Window2.prograssbar.Dispatcher.Invoke(
() => /*the code for modifying the progressbar*/ );
In WPF, UI controls and properties may only be activated from the UI thread. In order to change the progress bar's value from a different thread, you can add a command to the GUI thread's dispatcher queue. You can do this by passing a delegate to the Dispatcher.Invoke() method. See the article at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163328.aspx for more details.
You need to look into Delegates
Related
I have implemented a WPF application using background worker in which I am assigning data from database to combobox.
I have used observable collection as ItemSource for combobox .
When I try to fill up the observable collection in DoWork method of background worker, UI is not getting updated but if I move same code to ProgressChanged or RunWorkerCompleted then it is working fine.
I want to know why the DoWork method is not updating the UI.Also the logic for updating UI should be in ProgressChanged or RunWorkerCompleted?
To quote MSDN : "You must be careful not to manipulate any user-interface objects in your DoWork event handler" - so in your DoWork method call ReportProgress event and update your ui in the ProgressChanged event handler
There are many online examples showing how to correctly utilise a BackgroundWorker. As you haven't bothered to show us your code, all we can do is guess, but I'm guessing that you simply haven't implemented your code properly. Not wanting to duplicate this code once again, I'd rather advise you to take a look at my answer to the Progress Bar update from Background worker stalling question here on Stack Overflow.
It clearly demonstrates how to implement a BackgroundWorker correctly.
i recently acquired some source code for a console wrapper for a server. The program was originaly in WPF and part of the code was:
private void ServerProc_ErrorDataReceived(object sender, DataReceivedEventArgs e)
{
Dispatcher.Invoke(new Action(() =>
{
ConsoleTextBlock.Text += e.Data + "\r\n";
ConsoleScroll.ScrollToEnd();
}));
}
private void ServerProc_OutputDataReceived(object sender, DataReceivedEventArgs e)
{
Dispatcher.Invoke(new Action(() =>
{
ConsoleTextBlock.Text += e.Data + "\r\n";
ConsoleScroll.ScrollToEnd();
ParseServerInput(e.Data);
}));
}
Its also had this annotation in both voids:
// You have to do this through the Dispatcher because this method is
called by a different Thread
However in WinForms there is no such thing - is there a way to change this to a Background worker or something (Ive barely done any multi-threading)?
Both methods are event handlers. Chances are they are from some kind of listening code and I would expect that they are called from a non UI thread (eg normally a threadpool thread that is doing the listening). You can check that by putting a break point and looking at the threads window in the debugger.
So you will need to apply the winforms way of updating the UI from a non UI thread.
If you search SO you should find quite a lot on how to do that. E.g
Updating UI from a different thread
How to update GUI from another thread in C#?
Some background: A process that is running in a thread other than the UI thread is not allowed to access any UI controls directly. Your WPF ServerProc is running in a different thread than your UI which requires the Dispatcher to help you communicate from the ServerProc thread back to the UI controls in your UI thread.
If your ServerProc -- in WPF or WinForms -- were running in the UI thread, you would not need to surround it with the Dispatcher.Invoke call.
For you, you can put your ServerProc in a BackgroundWorker (MSDN example). Your DoWork method would contain the meat of the code doing the work and then depending on how the ServerProc does its work, you might be able to use ProgressChanged to do what both your sample WPF methods are doing. ProgressChanged has a parameter passed in that you would indicate if it were an error or data has been received and inside the function you could display the appropriate info. Take a look at the MSDN docs because they have a good example.
What's important to point out is that ProgressChanged happens on the UI thread so you do NOT need to surround your calls to your UI controls with Invoke; just call them normally. Same goes for RunWorkerCompleted which may be the other option for displaying data when your ServerProc has finished its job.
Finally, if you actually had to access a UI control from within your thread, you do something very similar looking as your WPF code sample. Look at MethodInvoker. Instead of Dispatcher, you're really just calling it from your main Form.
Assume i have control button with name "button1" and function with name "doSomething". Function "doSomething" is called from another thread.
i have two method to call function doSomething from UI thread.
First, from control button dispatcher
this.button1.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(new Action(() => { doSomething(); }));
and Second, from application dispatcher
this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(new Action(() => { doSomething(); }));
The result is same, what is the real different ?
The same dispatcher instance is referenced in all controls owned by the same thread. There is no difference.
All of UI controls (which were created normally), share the same dispatcher instance. That dispatcher is working on UI thread. If you create some control on backgroud thread, it will create new dispatcher on that thread, and this will not be very good.
The best way to avoid most problems with threading and UI controls both in WinForms and WPF is to use System.Threading.SynchronizationContext.Current. The workflow is simple: you get System.Threading.SynchronizationContext.Current while you are on UI thread and save it somewhere (for example in a public static field). Then, whenever you want to run some code on UI thread, you access that persisted SynchronizationContext intance and use its Send or Post methods. It will run you delegates on thread, where SynchronizationContext was achieved (for current case on UI thread). Also it is smart enough, to use the current way of Invoking (message loop for WinForms and dispatcher for WPF) and also if you are already calling from UI thread it will just run your delegate synchronously.
Just keep in mind, that you should get SynchronizationContext only after you create your first control on the current UI thread, because SynchronizationContext will be initialized right after that.
In most of the case, We have single UI thread. So, It doesn't make difference you call
control.Dispatcher(which comes inherited from DispatcherObject parent of the controls).
or
Disptacher.Current.
But there are scenarios, where you will end up having multiple dispatchers.
So, in that situation, Control.Dispatcher will help as It will find out the current dispatcher to respect Thread Affinity. In this Dispatcher.Current won't help.
One scenario, having dedicated thread(with dispatcher) for displaying busy indicator as default UI thread is busy in rendering large list of controls.
However, with SynchronizationContext is another way to avoid such issues. but what if that context or thread is no longer required or it has been set to null by any other developer. So, It is always wise to go for Control.Dispatcher in my opinion.
I have this:
Shows a waiting animation to 'block' the UI while performs a loading operation in the background.
At the end of the loading I call a method that instances a User Control and displays some data by using Bindings (and ObservableCollection among others)
This User Control gets displayed and user can interact with it, however the ObservableCollection seems to be stuck in another thread as it doesn't allow to add new items to it.
I've tried to update the UI at the Completed event of a BackgroundWorker, using Dispatcher, using DispatchTimer... all of this displays the User Control, but the ObservableCollection stays of out reach for adding.
The code that tries to add items to the collection is inside the UserControl.
The exact error is: "This type of CollectionView does not support changes to its SourceCollection from a thread different from the Dispatcher thread"
This does not happen if I don't do the loading in the background.
Thank you for any workaround for this.
By the way, trying to add the items using Dispatcher doesn't work either.
In other words, what I would like to do is to create an object in the UI Thread while being in the background... I know this may sounds silly.
You may have to check which Dispatcher you are using? In your case you could be referring to two different dispatchers.
Also why not use thread safe observable collection?
Usually I will create the objects on my UI thread, then populate them with data obtained from a background thread.
For example,
void async LoadButton_Clicked(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
MyCollection = new ObservableCollection<SomeItem>();
// Can also use a BackgroundWorker
var collectionData = await GetCollectionData();
foreach(var item in collectionData)
{
MyCollection.Add(item);
}
}
I'm using C# 5.0 async and await keywords for asynchronous operations, but you can also use a BackgroundWorker that does your background work.
You can also use Dispatcher.BeginInvoke() for some lighter background work (such as copying data into MyCollection), although for heavy work I find it still locks up the UI so I prefer to use background threads.
It is not possible to modify the contents of an ObservableCollection on a separate thread if a view is bound to this collection, instead you can override ObservableCollection and provide support for it and use it across your application.
This sample contains exactly what you want - http://tomlev2.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/wpf-binding-to-an-asynchronous-collection/
When it comes to threads and ui-elements one of the most important rules to follow which may safe you a lot of trouble in the long run is to keep ui-element instantiation on the ui-thread. Surely you can manage that. And if you need to change those objects from another thread you can use the Dispatcher.
(The threading model reference may also be of interest)
Thank you everyone for your help... a guy from MS visited the company (sorry for the commercial annotation) to do other things, I stoled him and show this behavior. In a matter of 2 minutes founds the source of the problem... which I'm not sure to really understand.
It happens that I'm using an ICollectionView to display a sorted/filtered version of my problematic ObservableCollection. I was creating this ICollectionView in the constructor of my class, so at the moment of deserialization it was created in another thread. He suggested to move this creation to a further time in code (when the related property gets read). This solved the problem.
However the ObservableCollection, created in that other thread, now lets me add new item. Not sure why, but now it works.
Sorry for being this late and thank you again.
Well lets say i have an object that i databind to, it implements INotifyPropertyChanged to tell the GUI when a value has changed...
if i trigger this from a different thread than the GUI thread how would wpf behave?
and will it make sure that it gets the value of the property from memory and not the cpu cache?
more or less im asking if wpf does lock() on the object containing the property...
Value changes fired by INotifyPropertyChanged are automatically marshalled back onto the dispatcher. (http://blog.lab49.com/archives/1166)
Fire this event on any thread you like...
Value changes fired by INotifyCollectionChanged are NOT reliably marshalled onto the dispatcher. (http://csharplive.wordpress.com/2008/09/11/wpf-data-binding-observablecollection-cross-thread-binding-support/)
If you need to update an observable collection from a different thread, follow the advice in this link
In addition to #Rob Fonseca-Ensor's answer, there is some good news for those lucky enough to use WPF4.5:
WPF enables you to access and modify data collections on threads other than the one that created the collection. This enables you to use a background thread to receive data from an external source, such as a database, and display the data on the UI thread. By using another thread to modify the collection, your user interface remains responsive to user interaction. (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb613588(v=vs.110).aspx#xthread_access)
There's a helpful summary by Jonathan Antoine: http://www.jonathanantoine.com/2011/09/24/wpf-4-5-part-7-accessing-collections-on-non-ui-threads/
In practice it seems to work as expected and seems to be thread-safe (haven't seen anything odd happen or exceptions as a result of updating on background thread). I believe it invokes on to the UI thread when needed, but I'm not too familiar with the internals.