How do I abort/cancel TPL Tasks?

Question

In a thread, I create some System.Threading.Task and start each task.

When I do a .Abort() to kill the thread, the tasks are not aborted.

How can I transmit the .Abort() to my tasks ?

Answer 1

You can't. Tasks use background threads from the thread pool. Also canceling threads using the Abort method is not recommended. You may take a look at the following blog post which explains a proper way of canceling tasks using cancellation tokens. Here's an example:

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        var ts = new CancellationTokenSource();
        CancellationToken ct = ts.Token;
        Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
        {
            while (true)
            {
                // do some heavy work here
                Thread.Sleep(100);
                if (ct.IsCancellationRequested)
                {
                    // another thread decided to cancel
                    Console.WriteLine("task canceled");
                    break;
                }
            }
        }, ct);

        // Simulate waiting 3s for the task to complete
        Thread.Sleep(3000);

        // Can't wait anymore => cancel this task 
        ts.Cancel();
        Console.ReadLine();
    }
}

Answer 2

Aborting a Task is easily possible if you capture the thread in which the task is running in. Here is an example code to demonstrate this:

void Main()
{
    Thread thread = null;

    Task t = Task.Run(() => 
    {
        //Capture the thread
        thread = Thread.CurrentThread;

        //Simulate work (usually from 3rd party code)
        Thread.Sleep(1000);

        //If you comment out thread.Abort(), then this will be displayed
        Console.WriteLine("Task finished!");
    });

    //This is needed in the example to avoid thread being still NULL
    Thread.Sleep(10);

    //Cancel the task by aborting the thread
    thread.Abort();
}

I used Task.Run() to show the most common use-case for this - using the comfort of Tasks with old single-threaded code, which does not use the CancellationTokenSource class to determine if it should be canceled or not.

Answer 3

Task are being executed on the ThreadPool (at least, if you are using the default factory), so aborting the thread cannot affect the tasks. For aborting tasks, see Task Cancellation on msdn.

Answer 4

I tried CancellationTokenSource but i can't do this. And i did do this with my own way. And it works.

namespace Blokick.Provider
{
    public class SignalRConnectProvider
    {
        public SignalRConnectProvider()
        {
        }

        public bool IsStopRequested { get; set; } = false; //1-)This is important and default `false`.

        public async Task<string> ConnectTab()
        {
            string messageText = "";
            for (int count = 1; count < 20; count++)
            {
                if (count == 1)
                {
                //Do stuff.
                }

                try
                {
                //Do stuff.
                }
                catch (Exception ex)
                {
                //Do stuff.
                }
                if (IsStopRequested) //3-)This is important. The control of the task stopping request. Must be true and in inside.
                {
                    return messageText = "Task stopped."; //4-) And so return and exit the code and task.
                }
                if (Connected)
                {
                //Do stuff.
                }
                if (count == 19)
                {
                //Do stuff.
                }
            }
            return messageText;
        }
    }
}

And another class of the calling the method:

namespace Blokick.Views
{
    [XamlCompilation(XamlCompilationOptions.Compile)]
    public partial class MessagePerson : ContentPage
    {
        SignalRConnectProvider signalR = new SignalRConnectProvider();

        public MessagePerson()
        {
            InitializeComponent();

            signalR.IsStopRequested = true; // 2-) And this. Make true if running the task and go inside if statement of the IsStopRequested property.

            if (signalR.ChatHubProxy != null)
            {
                 signalR.Disconnect();
            }

            LoadSignalRMessage();
        }
    }
}

Answer 5

Tasks have first class support for cancellation via cancellation tokens. Create your tasks with cancellation tokens, and cancel the tasks via these explicitly.