.net – How to properly cancel and restart a BackgroundWorker process

backgroundworkermultithreadingnet

Users of my application type HTML into a TextBox control.

I want my application to validate their input in the background.

Because I don't want to hammer the validation service, I've tried to build in a one-second delay before each validation.

However, I don't seem to be able to correctly interrupt an already-running BackgroundWorker process.

My Visual Basic code:

Sub W3CValidate(ByVal WholeDocumentText As String)

    'stop any already-running validation
    If ValidationWorker.IsBusy Then
        ValidationWorker.CancelAsync()
        'wait for it to become ready
        While ValidationWorker.IsBusy
            'pause for one-hundredth of a second
            System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(New TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 0, 10))
        End While
    End If

    'start validation
    Dim ValidationArgument As W3CValidator = New W3CValidator(WholeDocumentText)
    ValidationWorker.RunWorkerAsync(ValidationArgument)

End Sub

It seems that after calling my BackgroundWorker's CancelAsync(), its IsBusy never becomes False. It gets stuck in an infinite loop.

What am I doing wrong?

Best Answer

Try something like this:

bool restartWorker = false;

    void backgroundWorker1_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
    {
                    // add other code here
        if (e.Cancelled && restartWorker)
        {
            restartWorker = false;
            backgroundWorker1.RunWorkerAsync();
        }
    }

    private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        if (backgroundWorker1.IsBusy)
        {
            restartWorker = true;
            backgroundWorker1.CancelAsync();
        }
        else
            backgroundWorker1.RunWorkerAsync();
    }

Related Solutions

C# – How to wait for a BackgroundWorker to cancel

If I understand your requirement right, you could do something like this (code not tested, but shows the general idea):

private BackgroundWorker worker = new BackgroundWorker();
private AutoResetEvent _resetEvent = new AutoResetEvent(false);

public Form1()
{
    InitializeComponent();

    worker.DoWork += worker_DoWork;
}

public void Cancel()
{
    worker.CancelAsync();
    _resetEvent.WaitOne(); // will block until _resetEvent.Set() call made
}

void worker_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
    while(!e.Cancel)
    {
        // do something
    }

    _resetEvent.Set(); // signal that worker is done
}

C# – How to create an Excel (.XLS and .XLSX) file in C# without installing Microsoft Office

You can use a library called ExcelLibrary. It's a free, open source library posted on Google Code:

ExcelLibrary

This looks to be a port of the PHP ExcelWriter that you mentioned above. It will not write to the new .xlsx format yet, but they are working on adding that functionality in.

It's very simple, small and easy to use. Plus it has a DataSetHelper that lets you use DataSets and DataTables to easily work with Excel data.

ExcelLibrary seems to still only work for the older Excel format (.xls files), but may be adding support in the future for newer 2007/2010 formats.

You can also use EPPlus, which works only for Excel 2007/2010 format files (.xlsx files). There's also NPOI which works with both.

There are a few known bugs with each library as noted in the comments. In all, EPPlus seems to be the best choice as time goes on. It seems to be more actively updated and documented as well.

Also, as noted by @АртёмЦарионов below, EPPlus has support for Pivot Tables and ExcelLibrary may have some support (Pivot table issue in ExcelLibrary)

Here are a couple links for quick reference:
ExcelLibrary - GNU Lesser GPL
EPPlus - GNU (LGPL) - No longer maintained
EPPlus 5 - Polyform Noncommercial - Starting May 2020
NPOI - Apache License

Here some example code for ExcelLibrary:

Here is an example taking data from a database and creating a workbook from it. Note that the ExcelLibrary code is the single line at the bottom:

//Create the data set and table
DataSet ds = new DataSet("New_DataSet");
DataTable dt = new DataTable("New_DataTable");

//Set the locale for each
ds.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
dt.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;

//Open a DB connection (in this example with OleDB)
OleDbConnection con = new OleDbConnection(dbConnectionString);
con.Open();

//Create a query and fill the data table with the data from the DB
string sql = "SELECT Whatever FROM MyDBTable;";
OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(sql, con);
OleDbDataAdapter adptr = new OleDbDataAdapter();

adptr.SelectCommand = cmd;
adptr.Fill(dt);
con.Close();

//Add the table to the data set
ds.Tables.Add(dt);

//Here's the easy part. Create the Excel worksheet from the data set
ExcelLibrary.DataSetHelper.CreateWorkbook("MyExcelFile.xls", ds);

Creating the Excel file is as easy as that. You can also manually create Excel files, but the above functionality is what really impressed me.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – How to wait for a BackgroundWorker to cancel

C# – How to create an Excel (.XLS and .XLSX) file in C# without installing Microsoft Office

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