Is there a way to have a thread running in the background in a C# ASP.Net Web Forms web application regardless of what page is loaded?

Question

I'm working on a C# ASP.Net Web Forms application. I need to call an API three times a day and update tables with the data. Is there a way to have a thread running in the background doing this regardless of what page is loaded?

Answer 1

A simple Task could do this for you:

void MyFabulousApiCall() 
{ 
    // API magic happens here 
}

// Let the task perform your api-calls while your application is running 
bool appIsRunning = true;
var task = Task.Run(() =>
{
    int callsPerDay = 3;
    var now = DateTime.Now;
    var endOfDay = new DateTime(now.Year, now.Month, now.Day, 23, 59, 59);
    var remainingHours = (endOfDay - now).TotalHours;
    int delayPerCallInMs = (int)(remainingHours / callsPerDay * 60 * 60 * 1000);

    while (appIsRunning)
    {
        MyFabulousApiCall();       
        Thread.Sleep(delayPerCallInMs);
    }
}); 

This example would perform a given action X times a day, beginning with the starting time of your application. Of course you'd still cover restarting the task when something went wrong or cancelling the task if you don't need it anymore.

You could put it into your eg Startup.cs class to make sure that the api-call gets executed right after the apps' start.