Open Dental Software Manual

Home

User Manual

Discussion Forum

Thread Patterns

Patterns for Thread.

If you want to perform some work on another thread, and then update information on the UI, you would use a variation of this pattern:

Thread workerThread;

private delegate void DelegateSetString(String str,bool isBold);//this could also go at namespace level rather than class level

private void timerMsgs_Tick(object sender,EventArgs e) {//could be any kind of event, including button_Click
	workerThread=new Thread(new ThreadStart(this.WorkerThread_SetLabelMsg));
	workerThread.Start();//To prevent locking the UI while work is done on slow connection.
}

///<summary>Always called using worker thread.</summary>
private void WorkerThread_SetLabelMsg() {
	string s="";
	bool isBold=false;
	try {
		//do some work to set s and isBold
		this.Invoke(new DelegateSetString(SetString),new Object[] { s,isBold,color });
	}
	catch {
		//because this.Invoke can fail sometimes if the form is quickly closed and reopened because form handle has not yet been created.
	}
}

///<summary>Called from worker thread using delegate and Control.Invoke</summary>
private void SetString(String str,bool isBold) {
	labelMsg.Text=str;
	if(isBold) {
		labelMsg.Font=new Font(FontFamily.GenericSansSerif,10f,FontStyle.Bold);
	}
	else {
		labelMsg.Font=new Font(FontFamily.GenericSansSerif,8.5f,FontStyle.Regular);
	}
}

private void Form_FormClosing(object sender,FormClosingEventArgs e) {
	if(workerThread!=null){
		workerThread.Abort();
	}
}

Open Dental Software 1-503-363-5432