i am new to Threads, i have a List contains a strings. My goal is to make multiple threads do work to this List, this codes only for a single thread because i'm learning currently, however i get AV when i press start Button.
type
TDemoThread = class(TThread)
private
procedure Abort;
protected
procedure Execute; override;
public
List: TStringList;
end;
procedure TfrmMain.StartButton1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
i: integer;
List: Tstrings;
begin
for i := 0 to memo1.Lines.Count - 1 do
begin
List := TStringList.Create;
List.Add(memo1.Lines.Strings[i]);
end;
Thread := TDemoThread.Create(True);
Thread.FreeOnTerminate := True;
Thread.Start;
end;
procedure TDemoThread.Execute;
var
lHTTP: TIdHTTP;
i: integer;
X: Tstrings;
begin
inherited;
if Terminated then
Exit;
lHTTP := TIdHTTP.Create(nil);
X := TStringList.Create;
lHTTP.ReadTimeout := 30000;
lHTTP.HandleRedirects := True;
for i := 0 to List.Count - 1 do
try
X.Text := lHTTP.Get('https://instagram.com/' + List.Strings[i]);
S := ExtractDelimitedString(X.Text);
X.Clear;
TThread.Synchronize(nil,
procedure
begin
frmMain.Memo2.Lines.Add(List.Strings[i] + ' : ' + S);
end);
finally
end;
end;
Personally I'd avoid updating the form from the threads themselves. Threads are data generators here, not GUI managers. So let them separate their concerns.
I'd make all the threads accumulate the results into the same shared container and then make a GUI thread to poll that container instead. Human eyes are slow and Windows GUI is slow too, so you should not update your GUI more often than 2 or 3 times per second. It would only waste CPU load and blur the form into being unreadable.
Another thing would be to avoid using slow TStringList
unless its extra functionality (which makes it slow) is required. The regular TList<string>
is more than enough as a dumb container and is faster.
type
TDemoThread = class;
TfrmMain = class(TForm)
private
Fetchers: TThreadList<TDemoThread>;
Data: TThreadList<string>;
property inProcess: Boolean read ... write SetInProcess;
public
procedure AfterConstruction; override;
procedure BeforeDestruction; override;
....
end;
// this demo makes each thread per each line - that is actually a bad design
// one better use a thread pool working over the same queue and only have
// 20-40 worker threads for all the URLs
TDemoThread = class(TThread)
private
URL: string;
List: TThreadList<string>;
Tracker: TThreadList<TDemoThread>;
protected
procedure Execute; override;
end;
procedure TfrmMain.BeforeDestruction;
begin
while TThreadList.Count > 0 do
Sleep(100);
FreeAndNil( Fetchers );
Data.Free;
inherited;
end;
procedure TfrmMain.AfterConstruction;
begin
Fetchers := TThreadList<TDemoThread>.Create;
Data := TThreadList<string>.Create;
inherited;
end;
procedure TfrmMain.StartButton1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
i: integer;
List: Tstrings;
worker: TDemoThread;
URL: string;
begin
If inProcess then exit;
for URL in memo1.Lines do begin
worker := TDemoThread.Create(True);
worker.FreeOnTerminate := True;
worker.URL := URL;
worker.List := Data;
worker.Tracker := Fetchers;
Fetchers.Add( worker );
end;
InProcess := True;
for worker in Fetchers do
worker.Start;
end;
procedure TfrmMain.SetInProcess(const Value: Boolean);
begin
if Value = InProcess then exit; // form already is in this mode
FInProcess := Value;
memo1.ReadOnly := Value;
StartButton.Enabled := not Value;
if Value then begin
Memo2.Lines.Clear;
Data.Clear;
end;
Timer1.Delay := 500; // twice per second
Timer1.Enabled := Value;
If not Value then // for future optimisation - make immediate mode change
FlushData; // when last worker thread quits, no waiting for timer event
If not Value then
ShowMessage('Work complete');
end;
procedure TfrmMain.Timer1Timer(const Sender: TObject);
begin
FlushData;
if Fetchers.Count <= 0 then
InProcess := False;
end;
procedure TfrmMain.FlushData;
begin
Data.LockList; // next two operations should go as non-interruptible atom
try
Memo2.Lines.AddStrings( Data.ToArray() );
Data.Clear;
finally
Data.UnLockList;
end;
end;
procedure TDemoThread.Execute;
var
lHTTP: TIdHTTP;
begin
try
lHTTP := TIdHTTP.Create(nil);
try
lHTTP.ReadTimeout := 30000;
lHTTP.HandleRedirects := True;
S := ExtractDelimitedString( lHTTP.Get('https://instagram.com/' + URL) );
List.Add( S );
finally
lHTTP.Destroy;
end;
finally
Tracker.Remove( Self );
end;
end;
- http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/Seattle/en/System.Classes.TThreadList
- http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/Seattle/en/System.Classes.TStrings.AddStrings
PS. Personally, I'd also use OmniThreads Library, as it generally makes maintaining data-generating threads easier. For example just managing how many threads did you created becomes setting one property and determining when all threads complete their work is another oneliner. You really should not create a thousand of threads to fetch all the URLs, instead you should have 10-20 threads in a Thread Pool
that would take the URLs from a Input Queue
and fetch them one after another. I suggest you reading about OTL's Parallel For
and Fork-Join
patterns at http://otl.17slon.com/tutorials.htm - it would allow making such an application more concise and easier to write. Pipeline
pattern would probably be even better match for this task - since you anyway prepare URLs list as a source collection. Half the scaffolding in StartButtonClick
would be gone, and the whole TDemoThread
class too.
Your problem is that you never assign to the List
member of the thread class:
type
TDemoThread = class(TThread)
private
procedure Abort;
protected
procedure Execute; override;
public
List: TStringList; <-- never assigned to, hence always nil
end;
Hence the access violation.
It looks like you are trying to pass the contents of memo1
to the thread. I would do that like so:
type
TDemoThread = class(TThread)
private
FData: TStringList;
protected
procedure Execute; override;
public
constructor Create;
destructor Destroy; override;
end;
constructor TDemoThread.Create(Data: TStrings);
begin
inherited Create(False);
FData := TStringList.Create;
FData.Assign(Data);
FreeOnTerminate := True;
end;
destructor TDemoThread.Destroy;
begin
FData.Free;
inherited;
end;
procedure TDemoThread.Execute;
var
lHTTP: TIdHTTP;
i: integer;
X: TStrings;
begin
inherited;
if Terminated then
Exit;
lHTTP := TIdHTTP.Create(nil);
X := TStringList.Create;
lHTTP.ReadTimeout := 30000;
lHTTP.HandleRedirects := True;
for i := 0 to FData.Count - 1 do
try
X.Text := lHTTP.Get('https://instagram.com/' + FData[i]);
S := ExtractDelimitedString(X.Text);
X.Clear;
TThread.Synchronize(nil,
procedure
begin
frmMain.Memo2.Lines.Add(FData[i] + ' : ' + S);
end);
finally
end;
end;
procedure TfrmMain.StartButton1Click(Sender: TObject);
begin
TDemoThread.Create(memo1.Lines);
end;
It is pointless to create suspended and then immediately start. It is also not permitted to hold a reference to a FreeOnTerminate
thread after it has started so I removed that.
The code in TDemoThread.Execute
leaks, unless you are running exclusively on an ARC platform. And the try/finally is pointless. And you don't need a string list to hold a single string
. Assuming you aren't using ARC it should be:
procedure TDemoThread.Execute;
var
lHTTP: TIdHTTP;
i: integer;
S: string;
begin
if Terminated then
Exit;
lHTTP := TIdHTTP.Create(nil);
try
lHTTP.ReadTimeout := 30000;
lHTTP.HandleRedirects := True;
for i := 0 to FData.Count - 1 do
begin
S := ExtractDelimitedString(lHTTP.Get('https://instagram.com/' + FData[i]));
TThread.Synchronize(nil,
procedure
begin
frmMain.Memo2.Lines.Add(FData[i] + ' : ' + S);
end);
end;
finally
lHTTP.Free;
end;
end;