Thread-safe Control Calls in Enriched Client Applications

Abstract

When the first version of the .NET Framework was released, there was a pattern in enriched client applications that focused on message processing loops, where an embedded queue was used to pass execution units from worker threads. A generalized ISynchronizeInvoke solution was then developed in which the source thread could queue a delegate to the destination thread and, as an optional option, wait for that delegate to complete. After asynchronous page support was introduced into the ASP.NET architecture, the ISynchronizeInvoke pattern did not work because asynchronous ASP.NET pages are not mapped to a single thread. This was the reason for creating an even more generalized solution – SynchronizationContext, which is the subject of the research. The article uses practical examples to show how to update UI elements from worker threads without breaking thread-safety of the user application. Solutions proposed in this aspect are: using Beginlnvoke or Invoke methods to put this delegate into the UI thread message queue; capturing the UI thread synchronization context via the Current property of the SynchronizationContext class; using the deprecated BackgroundWorker class, which provides an implicit capture of the UI thread synchronization context. The peculiarity of implementation of the SynchronizationContext abstract class in ASP.NET platform is not left unnoticed. Practical recommendations on the use of marshalling mechanism on the example of development of multiclient chat with a centralized server are formulated.