Edit I suppose the proper way of forcing await to invoke the worker asynchronously is with a Task.Run, like this:
await Task.Run(() => builder.Build(dlg.FileName, cts.Token, new Progress(ReportProgress)));
Got some light from http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pfxteam/archive/2012/04/12/10293335.aspx.
this should be easy but I'm new to async/await so bear with me. I am building a class library exposing an API with some long-running operations. In the past, I used a BackgroundWorker to deal with progress reporting and cancelation, like in this simplified code fragment:
public void DoSomething(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
BackgroundWorker bw = (BackgroundWorker)sender;
// e.Argument is any object as passed by consumer via RunWorkerAsync...
do
{
// ... do something ...
// abort if requested
if (bw.CancellationPending)
{
e.Cancel = true;
break;
} //eif
// notify progress
bw.ReportProgress(nPercent);
}
}
and the client code was like:
BackgroundWorker worker = new BackgroundWorker
{ WorkerReportsProgress = true,
WorkerSupportsCancellation = true
};
worker.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(_myWorkerClass.DoSomething);
worker.ProgressChanged += WorkerProgressChanged;
worker.RunWorkerCompleted += WorkerCompleted;
worker.RunWorkerAsync(someparam);
Now I'd like to leverage the new async pattern. So, first of all here is how I'd write a simple long-running method in my API; here I'm just reading a file line by line, just to emulate a real-world process where I'll have to convert a file format with some processing:
public async Task DoSomething(string sInputFileName, CancellationToken? cancel, IProgress progress)
{
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(sInputFileName))
{
int nLine = 0;
int nTotalLines = CountLines(sInputFileName);
while ((sLine = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
nLine++;
// do something here...
if ((cancel.HasValue) && (cancel.Value.IsCancellationRequested)) break;
if (progress != null) progress.Report(nLine * 100 / nTotalLines);
}
return nLine;
}
}
For the sake of this sample, say this is a method of a DummyWorker class. Now, here is my client code (a WPF test app):
private void ReportProgress(int n)
{
Dispatcher.BeginInvoke((Action)(() => { _progress.Value = n; }));
}
private async void OnDoSomethingClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
OpenFileDialog dlg = new OpenFileDialog { Filter = "Text Files (*.txt)|*.txt" };
if (dlg.ShowDialog() == false) return;
// show the job progress UI...
CancellationTokenSource cts = new CancellationTokenSource();
DummyWorker worker = new DummyWorker();
await builder.Build(dlg.FileName, cts.Token, new Progress(ReportProgress));
// hide the progress UI...
}
The implementation for the IProgress interface comes from http://blog.stephencleary.com/2010/06/reporting-progress-from-tasks.html, so you can refer to that URL. Anyway, in this usage test the UI is effectively blocked and I see no progress. So what would be the full picture for such a scenario, with reference to the consuming code?
As noted on the top of that blog post, the information in that post is outdated. You should use the new IProgress<T>
API provided in .NET 4.5.
If you're using blocking I/O, then make your core method blocking:
public void Build(string sInputFileName, CancellationToken cancel, IProgress<int> progress)
{
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(sInputFileName))
{
int nLine = 0;
int nTotalLines = CountLines(sInputFileName);
while ((sLine = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
{
nLine++;
// do something here...
cancel.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
if (progress != null) progress.Report(nLine * 100 / nTotalLines);
}
return nLine;
}
}
and then wrap it in Task.Run
when you call it:
private async void OnDoSomethingClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
OpenFileDialog dlg = new OpenFileDialog { Filter = "Text Files (*.txt)|*.txt" };
if (dlg.ShowDialog() == false) return;
// show the job progress UI...
CancellationTokenSource cts = new CancellationTokenSource();
DummyWorker worker = new DummyWorker();
var progress = new Progress<int>((_, value) => { _progress.Value = value; });
await Task.Run(() => builder.Build(dlg.FileName, cts.Token, progress);
// hide the progress UI...
}
Alternatively, you could rewrite Build
to use asynchronous APIs and then just call it directly from the event handler without wrapping it in Task.Run
.
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