I have a DispatcherTimer
running in my code that fire every 30 seconds to update system status from the server. The timer fires in the client even if I'm debugging my server code so if I've been debugging for 5 minutes I may end up with a dozen timeouts in the client. Finally decided I needed to fix this so looking to make a more async
/ await
friendly DispatcherTimer.
- Code running in
DispatcherTimer
must be configurable whether it is reentrant or not (i.e. if the task is already running it should not try to run it again)
- Should be task based (whether or not this requires I actually expose Task at the root is a gray area)
- Should be able to run async code and
await
on tasks to complete
- Whether it wraps or extends DispatcherTimer probably doesn't really matter but wrapping it may be slightly less ambiguous if you don't know how to use it
- Possibly expose bindable properties for
IsRunning
for UI
Here's what I came up with.
SmartDispatcherTimer
Extends DispatcherTimer
(was easiest way to get this up and running)
- Has a
TickTask
property to provide a Task
to handle the logic
- Has an
IsReentrant
property (of course the whole point is that I want it to not be reentrant so normally this is false)
- It assumes anything you're calling is fully awaitable - or you'd end up losing the reentrancy protection benefits
Usage:
var timer = new SmartDispatcherTimer();
timer.IsReentrant = false;
timer.Interval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30);
timer.TickTask = async () =>
{
StatusMessage = "Updating..."; // MVVM property
await UpdateSystemStatus(false);
StatusMessage = "Updated at " + DateTime.Now;
};
timer.Start();
Here's the code. Would love to hear any thoughts on it
public class SmartDispatcherTimer : DispatcherTimer
{
public SmartDispatcherTimer()
{
base.Tick += SmartDispatcherTimer_Tick;
}
async void SmartDispatcherTimer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (TickTask == null)
{
Debug.WriteLine("No task set!");
return;
}
if (IsRunning && !IsReentrant)
{
// previous task hasn't completed
Debug.WriteLine("Task already running");
return;
}
try
{
// we're running it now
IsRunning = true;
Debug.WriteLine("Running Task");
await TickTask.Invoke();
Debug.WriteLine("Task Completed");
}
catch (Exception)
{
Debug.WriteLine("Task Failed");
}
finally
{
// allow it to run again
IsRunning = false;
}
}
public bool IsReentrant { get; set; }
public bool IsRunning { get; private set; }
public Func<Task> TickTask { get; set; }
}