keeping the thread safe UI accessors in a separate class in c#

Question

In my multi threaded apps i need to do cross thread access on UI elements and i am using the thread safe methods to do that. I am repeatedly using this a lot in many of my projects and keeping them in the form file itself is making the file look ugly. So i want to create a seprate class where i can put all this and call them whenever needed but i am having trouble with it. For instace for changing the text element of a control i am using the following

delegate void SetTextCallback(string text, Control ctrl);

public void SetText(string text, Control ctrl)
    {
        if (ctrl.InvokeRequired)
        {
            SetTextCallback d = new SetTextCallback(SetText);
            this.Invoke(d, new object[] { text, ctrl });
        }
        else
        {
            if (ctrl.GetType() == typeof(Label))
            {
                ctrl.Text = text;
            }
            else
            {
                ctrl.Text += Environment.NewLine + text;
            }
        }
    }

and call this function as

SetText("some text",label1);

This works fine if it is in the form class, if i put it into another class i am getting an error in the line

this.Invoke(d, new object[] { text, ctrl });

Can some one tell me how can i do this properly.

Also is it possible to have one UI accessor method do all the stuff, that is right now i am having multiple methods like this one to change the text one to change the enabled property one to change the back color and one to change the fore color. Is it possible to do it with something like

public void ChangePropert(Control ctrl,Property prop,Value val)

Answer 1

The problem with all this is you are starting to leak UI code outside of the form where the controls actually reside. A thread should not have to know about controls, it should do work and update the main thread and let the main thread worry about what needs to be done in the UI.

The way to accomplish this is have a callback that a second thread can call, but force that callback to actually be executed on the main thread instead of executed on the second thread. You can accomplish this by using the Synchronization context.

You need to wrap your secondary threads in a class that can keep a reference to the main thread synchronization context. Then the secondary threads can use this for call backs.

Example:

public partial class Form1 : Form
{
    private SynchronizationContext _synchronizationContext;

    public Form1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        //Client must be careful to create sync context somehwere they are sure to be on main thread
        _synchronizationContext = AsyncOperationManager.SynchronizationContext;
    }

    //Callback method implementation - must be of this form
    public void ReceiveThreadData(object threadData)
    {
        // This callback now exeutes on the main thread.
        // Can use directly in UI without error
        this.listBoxMain.Items.Add((string)threadData);
    }

    private void DoSomeThreadWork()
    {
        // Thread needs callback and sync context so it must be wrapped in a class.
        SendOrPostCallback callback = new SendOrPostCallback(ReceiveThreadData);
        SomeThreadTask task = new SomeThreadTask(_synchronizationContext, callback);
        Thread thread = new Thread(task.ExecuteThreadTask);
        thread.Start();
    }

    private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        DoSomeThreadWork();
    }

}

And your thread class will look something like this:

/// SomeThreadTask defines the work a thread needs to do and also provides any data ///required along with callback pointers etc.
/// Populate a new SomeThreadTask instance with a synch context and callnbackl along with ///any data the thread needs
/// then start the thread to execute the task.
/// </summary>
public class SomeThreadTask
{

    private string _taskId;
    private SendOrPostCallback _completedCallback;
    private SynchronizationContext _synchronizationContext;

    /// <summary>
    /// Get instance of a delegate used to notify the main thread when done.
    /// </summary>
    internal SendOrPostCallback CompletedCallback
    {
        get { return _completedCallback; }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Get SynchronizationContext for main thread.
    /// </summary>
    internal SynchronizationContext SynchronizationContext
    {
        get { return _synchronizationContext; }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Thread entry point function.
    /// </summary>
    public void ExecuteThreadTask()
    {

        //Just sleep instead of doing any real work
        Thread.Sleep(5000);

        string message = "This is some spoof data from thread work.";

        // Execute callback on synch context to tell main thread this task is done.
        SynchronizationContext.Post(CompletedCallback, (object)message);


    }

    public SomeThreadTask(SynchronizationContext synchronizationContext, SendOrPostCallback callback)
    {
        _synchronizationContext = synchronizationContext;
        _completedCallback = callback;
    }

}

Now you can just get rid of all the invoke crap on every control.

Answer 2

You could separate this stuff out as Extension methods. That would allow you to call methods in the object itself instead of passing it in as a parameter like you do now.

So you could do: label1.SetText("some text"); instad of SetText("some text", label1);

An additional gain would be that you could have separate implementations for each control type, so you could have one for label and one for the text box. This would make the code somewhat cleaner.

Finally, regarding your question about using reflection to set the properties. You can get a reference to the property using the Type.GetProperty() method. This returns a PropertyInfo object that you can use to set the property value like this:

var textProperty = label1.GetType().GetProperty("Text");
textProperty.SetValue(label1, "some text", null);

Answer 3

It is just while you debugging your project, right?
anyway, if you had another option not to create a separate class to manipulate this, you can set this CheckForIllegalCrossThreadCalls property to false on each form that calls threads other than its own thread.

CheckForIllegalCrossThreadCalls - MSDN