Background timer to update UI?

Question

I got a little problem with my application.
I would like to update something on my UI every 10 seconds. I first used a DispatcherTimer for this but it will block my UI for a short time because the update method needs to load something from the web and this operation needs some time. Now I thought about some kind of background worker and I found BackgroundTasks.
The problem with Background tasks is, as far as I understood it correctly, that they are supposed to serve as updaters even if the app is suspended. I don't need that. I only would like to update if my app is running not if it is suspended.

Is there a good way to solve this? Any suggestions what to use for this?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You need two things for it:

1. Timer

   You can update the UI in System.Timers.Timer with the 10 seconds interval.

2. Dispatcher

   You need to use Dispatcher.Invoke to change the UI without holding the main UI thread. Instead the method Process should be called on a separate thread (Timer method), other than main UI thread, and use Dispatcher in it to alert main UI thread for the change.

   Process() // method to be called after regular interval in Timer
   {
       // lengthy process, i.e. data fetching and processing etc.
   
       // here comes the UI update part
       Dispatcher.Invoke((Action)delegate() { /* update UI */ });
   }