Why does this Parallel.ForEach code freeze the program up?

Question

More newbie questions:

This code grabs a number of proxies from the list in the main window (I couldn't figure out how to make variables be available between different functions) and does a check on each one (simple httpwebrequest) and then adds them to a list called finishedProxies.

For some reason when I press the start button, the whole program hangs up. I was under the impression that Parallel creates separate threads for each action leaving the UI thread alone so that it's responsive?

private void start_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            // Populate a list of proxies
            List<string> proxies = new List<string>();
            List<string> finishedProxies = new List<string>();

            foreach (string proxy in proxiesList.Items)
            {
                proxies.Add(proxy);
            }

            Parallel.ForEach<string>(proxies, (i) =>
            {
                string checkResult;
                checkResult = checkProxy(i);

                finishedProxies.Add(checkResult);
                // update ui
                /*
                 status.Dispatcher.Invoke(
                  System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherPriority.Normal,
                  new Action(
                    delegate()
                    {
                        status.Content = "hello" + checkResult;
                    }
                )); */
                // update ui finished

                
                //Console.WriteLine("[{0}] F({1}) = {2}", Thread.CurrentThread.Name, i, CalculateFibonacciNumber(i));
            });

            
        }

I've tried using the code that's commented out to make changes to the UI inside the Parallel.Foreach and it makes the program freeze after the start button is pressed. It's worked for me before but I used Thread class.

How can I update the UI from inside the Parallel.Foreach and how do I make Parallel.Foreach work so that it doesn't make the UI freeze up while it's working?

Here's the whole code.

Answer 1

You must not start the parallel processing in your UI thread. See the example under the "Avoid Executing Parallel Loops on the UI Thread" header in this page.

Update: Or, you can simply create a new thread manuall and start the processing inside that as I see you have done. There's nothing wrong with that too.

Also, as Jim Mischel points out, you are accessing the lists from multiple threads at the same time, so there are race conditions there. Either substitute ConcurrentBag for List, or wrap the lists inside a lock statement each time you access them.