Invoke a delegate on a specific thread C#

Question

Is there any way to get a delegate to run on a specific thread?

Say I have:

CustomDelegate del = someObject.someFunction;
Thread dedicatedThread = ThreadList[x];

Can I have a consistent background long running thread and invoke my own delegates on it whenever I need it. It has to be the same thread each time.

[Edit]

The reason why I want it to be on a dedicated thread is time is that I inten to run the delegate on it and suspend the thread after y milliseconds, and resume the thread when I run another delegate on it. I see this isn't possible. I will have a delegate queue and let the main function of the thread read and run from it.

To clarify with a concrete example, I have a game system with a bunch of player threads. I would like each playerthread to run event handlers for game events on it. If the event handlers take too much time I would like to be able to pause that particular player until the next event by suspending its thread.

Thus having a dedicated thread on which I can run multiple event handlers I can pause a particular player's AI in case it became bugged or is taking too long.

Answer 1

I think the best solution is to use Task objects and queue them to an StaThreadScheduler running a single thread.

Alternatively, you could use the ActionThread in Nito.Async to create a normal thread with a built-in queue of Action delegates.

However, neither of these will directly address another need: the ability to "pause" one action and continue with another one. To do this, you'd need to sprinkle "synchronization points" throughout every action and have a way to save its state, re-queue it, and continue with the next action.

All that complexity is very nearly approaching a thread scheduling system, so I recommend taking a step back and doing more of a re-design. You could allow each action to be queued to the ThreadPool (I recommend just having each one be a Task object). You'll still need to sprinkle "synchronization points", but instead of saving state and re-queueing them, you'll just need to pause (block) them.

Answer 2

Normally, I would suggest just using a the thread pool or BackgroundWorker class - but these do not guarantee that work will occur on any particular thread. It's unclear why you care which thread runs the works, but assuming that it does somehow matter ...

You would have to pass the Delegate object through some kind of shared memory, like a queue. The background thread would have to watch this queue, pull delegates off of it when they exist, and execute them.

If it turns out that the thread pool is acceptable to run your code, you could always use the BeginInvoke method of the delegate to do so:

// wrap your custom delegate in an action for simplicity ...
Action someCode = () => yourCustomDelegate( p1, p2, p3, ... );
// asynchronously execute the currying Action delegate on the threadpool...
someCode.BeginInvoke( someCode.EndInvoke, action );