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Multithreading in C# 5.0 Cookbook

Multithreading in C# 5.0 Cookbook

By : Evgenii Agafonov
4.6 (5)
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Multithreading in C# 5.0 Cookbook

Multithreading in C# 5.0 Cookbook

4.6 (5)
By: Evgenii Agafonov
Buy this Book

Overview of this book

In an age when computer processors are being developed to contain more and more cores, multithreading is a key factor for creating scalable, effective, and responsive applications. If you fail to do it correctly, it can lead to puzzling problems that take a huge amount of time to resolve. Therefore, having a solid understanding of multithreading is a must for the modern application developer. Multithreading in C# 5.0 Cookbook is an easy-to-understand guide to the most puzzling programming problems. This book will guide you through practical examples dedicated to various aspects of multithreading in C# on Windows and will give you a good basis of practical knowledge which you can then use to program your own scalable and reliable multithreaded applications. This book guides you through asynchronous and parallel programming from basic examples to practical, real-world solutions to complex problems. You will start from the very beginning, learning what a thread is, and then proceed to learn new concepts based on the information you get from the previous examples. After describing the basics of threading, you will be able to grasp more advanced concepts like Task Parallel Library and C# asynchronous functions. Then, we move towards parallel programming, starting with basic data structures and gradually progressing to the more advanced patterns. The book concludes with a discussion of the specifics of Windows 8 application programming, giving you a complete understanding of how Windows 8 applications are different and how to program asynchronous applications for Windows 8.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
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Preface
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Preface
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What this book covers
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What you need for this book
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Who this book is for
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Conventions
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Reader feedback
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Customer support
Lock Free Chapter
1
1. Threading Basics
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1. Threading Basics
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Introduction
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Creating a thread in C#
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Pausing a thread
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Making a thread wait
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Aborting a thread
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Determining a thread state
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Thread priority
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Foreground and background threads
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Passing parameters to a thread
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Locking with a C# lock keyword
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Locking with a Monitor construct
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Handling exceptions
2
2. Thread Synchronization
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2. Thread Synchronization
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Introduction
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Performing basic atomic operations
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Using the Mutex construct
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Using the SemaphoreSlim construct
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Using the AutoResetEvent construct
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Using the ManualResetEventSlim construct
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Using the CountDownEvent construct
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Using the Barrier construct
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Using the ReaderWriterLockSlim construct
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Using the SpinWait construct
3
3. Using a Thread Pool
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3. Using a Thread Pool
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Introduction
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Invoking a delegate on a thread pool
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Posting an asynchronous operation on a thread pool
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Thread pool and the degree of parallelism
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Implementing a cancellation option
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Using a wait handle and timeout with a thread pool
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Using a timer
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Using the BackgroundWorker component
4
4. Using Task Parallel Library
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4. Using Task Parallel Library
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Introduction
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Creating a task
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Performing basic operations with a task
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Combining tasks together
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Converting the APM pattern to tasks
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Converting the EAP pattern to tasks
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Implementing a cancellation option
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Handling exceptions in tasks
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Running tasks in parallel
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Tweaking tasks execution with TaskScheduler
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5. Using C# 5.0
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5. Using C# 5.0
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Introduction
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Using the await operator to get asynchronous task results
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Using the await operator in a lambda expression
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Using the await operator with consequent asynchronous tasks
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Using the await operator for the execution of parallel asynchronous tasks execution
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Handling exceptions in the asynchronous operations
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Avoid using the captured synchronization context
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Working around the async void method
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Designing a custom awaitable type
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Using the dynamic type with await
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6. Using Concurrent Collections
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6. Using Concurrent Collections
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Introduction
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Using ConcurrentDictionary
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Implementing asynchronous processing using ConcurrentQueue
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Changing asynchronous processing order ConcurrentStack
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Creating a scalable crawler with ConcurrentBag
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Generalizing asynchronous processing with BlockingCollection
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7. Using PLINQ
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7. Using PLINQ
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Introduction
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Using the Parallel class
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Parallelizing a LINQ query
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Tweaking the parameters of a PLINQ query
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Handling exceptions in a PLINQ query
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Managing data partitioning in a PLINQ query
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Creating a custom aggregator for a PLINQ query
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8. Reactive Extensions
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8. Reactive Extensions
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Introduction
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Converting a collection to asynchronous Observable
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Writing custom Observable
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Using Subjects
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Creating an Observable object
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Using LINQ queries against the observable collection
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Creating asynchronous operations with Rx
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9. Using Asynchronous I/O
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9. Using Asynchronous I/O
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Introduction
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Working with files asynchronously
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Writing an asynchronous HTTP server and client
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Working with a database asynchronously
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Calling a WCF service asynchronously
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10. Parallel Programming Patterns
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10. Parallel Programming Patterns
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Introduction
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Implementing Lazy-evaluated shared states
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Implementing Parallel Pipeline with BlockingCollection
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Implementing Parallel Pipeline with TPL DataFlow
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Implementing Map/Reduce with PLINQ
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11. There's More
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11. There's More
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Introduction
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Using a timer in a Windows Store application
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Using WinRT from usual applications
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Using BackgroundTask in Windows Store applications
12
Index
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Index

Foreground and background threads

This recipe will describe what foreground and background threads are and how setting this option affects the program's behavior.

Getting ready

To work through this recipe, you will need Visual Studio 2012. There are no other prerequisites. The source code for this recipe can be found at BookSamples\Chapter1\Recipe7.

How to do it...

To understand the effect of foreground and background threads on a program, perform the following:

  1. Start Visual Studio 2012. Create a new C# Console Application project.
  2. In the Program.cs file, add the following using directives:
    using System;
using System.Threading;
  3. Add the following code snippet below the Main method:
    class ThreadSample
{
  private readonly int _iterations;

  public ThreadSample(int iterations)
  {
    _iterations = iterations;
  }
  public void CountNumbers()
  {
    for (int i = 0; i < _iterations; i++)
    {
      Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5));
      Console.WriteLine("{0} prints {1}", Thread.CurrentThread.Name, i);
    }
  }
}
  4. Add the following code snippet inside the Main method:
    var sampleForeground = new ThreadSample(10);
var sampleBackground = new ThreadSample(20);

var threadOne = new Thread(sampleForeground.CountNumbers);
threadOne.Name = "ForegroundThread";
var threadTwo = new Thread(sampleBackground.CountNumbers);
threadTwo.Name = "BackgroundThread";
threadTwo.IsBackground = true;

threadOne.Start();
threadTwo.Start();
  5. Run the program.

How it works...

When the main program starts it defines two different threads. By default, a thread we create explicitly is a foreground thread. To create a background thread, we manually set the IsBackground property of the threadTwo object to true. We configure these threads in a way that the first one will complete faster, and then we run the program.

After the first thread completes, the program shuts down and the background thread terminates. This is the main difference between the two: a process waits for all the foreground threads to complete before finishing the work, but if it has background threads, they just shut down.

It is also important to mention that if a program defines a foreground thread that does not complete, the main program will not end properly.

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