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Updating Winforms Label with Timer and Thread, stock app

Time:11-17

Gist of it has probably been asked before, but I'm completely lost so I'm looking for some personal guidance. Been trying to make a stock tracker app for funsies using WinForms and the Yahoo API. Trying to get it so you can input a tracker symbol and it will make a new Label that will keep updating itself every so often. However, it keeps giving me error messages about "Cross-thread operation not valid". I've tried to do some googling, but yeah, completely lost. Here is most of the code, hope you guys can make some sense of it.

using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using YahooFinanceApi;

namespace stockpoging4
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            System.Globalization.CultureInfo.DefaultThreadCurrentUICulture = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("en-US");
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            using (Prompt prompt = new Prompt("Enter the ticker symbol", "Add ticker"))
            {
                string result = prompt.Result;
                result = result.ToUpper();
                if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(result))
                {
                    do_Things(result);
                }
            }
        }
        public async Task<string> getStockPrices(string symbol)
        {
            try
            {
                var securities = await Yahoo.Symbols(symbol).Fields(Field.RegularMarketPrice).QueryAsync();
                var aapl = securities[symbol];
                var price = aapl[Field.RegularMarketPrice];
                return symbol   " $"   price;

            }
            catch
            {
                return "404";
            }
        }


        public async void do_Things(string result)
        {
            string price;
            Label label = null;

            if (label == null)
            {
                price = await getStockPrices(result);
                label = new Label() { Name = result, Text = result   " $"   price };
                flowLayoutPanel2.Controls.Add(label);
            }
            else
            {
                Thread testThread = new Thread(async delegate ()
                {
                    uiLockingTask();
                    price = await getStockPrices(result);
                    label.Text = result   " $"   price;
                    label.Update();
                });
            }
            System.Timers.Timer timer = new System.Timers.Timer(10000);
            timer.Start();
            timer.Elapsed  = do_Things(results);
        }

        private void uiLockingTask() {
            Thread.Sleep(5000);
        }
    }
}

CodePudding user response:

A much easier way is using async these days.

Here is a class which triggers an Action every interval:

public class UITimer : IDisposable
{
    private readonly CancellationTokenSource _cancellationTokenSource = new CancellationTokenSource();
    private readonly Task _timerTask;

    // use a private function which returns a task
    private async Task Innerloop(TimeSpan interval, Action<UITimer> action)
    {
        try
        {
            while (!_cancellationTokenSource.IsCancellationRequested)
            {
                await Task.Delay(interval, _cancellationTokenSource.Token);
                action(this);
            }
        }
        catch (OperationCanceledException) { }
    }

    // the constructor calls the private StartTimer, (the first part will run synchroniously, until the away delay) 
    public UITimer(TimeSpan interval, Action<UITimer> action) =>
        _timerTask = Innerloop(interval, action);

    // make sure the while loop will stop.
    public void Dispose() =>
        _cancellationTokenSource?.Cancel();
}

And I created a new form with this as code behind:

public partial class Form1 : Form
{
    private readonly UITimer _uiTimer;
    private int _counter;

    public Form1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        // setup the time and pass the callback action
        _uiTimer = new UITimer(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1), Update);
    }

    // the orgin timer is passed as parameter.
    private void Update(UITimer timer)
    {
        // do your thing on the UI thread.
        _counter  ;
        label1.Text= _counter.ToString();
    }

    private void Form1_FormClosed(object sender, FormClosedEventArgs e)
    {
        // make sure the time (whileloop) is stopped.
        _uiTimer.Dispose();
    }
}

The advantage is, that the callback runs on the UI thread but doesn't block it.

Easy but does the trick ;-)

CodePudding user response:

Let me point out several things in your implementation.

  1. You subscribe to timer.Elapsed after timer.Start that might be invalid in case of a short-timer interval
  2. The event handler is called in background that's why you continuously get "Cross-thread operation not valid". UI components should be dispatched correctly from background threads, for example, by calling flowLayoutPanel2.BeginInvoke(new Action(() => flowLayoutPanel2.Controls.Add(label))); and label.BeginInvoke(new Action(label.Update)). This change already would fix your exception.
  3. Despite the fact that I would implement this functionality in a different way, here I post slightly changed code that just does exactly what you need with some tweaks.
    public partial class Form1 : Form 
    {
        Task _runningTask;
        CancellationTokenSource _cancellationToken;
    
        public Form1()
        {
            System.Globalization.CultureInfo.DefaultThreadCurrentUICulture = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("en-US");
            InitializeComponent();
        }
    
        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            using (Prompt prompt = new Prompt("Enter the ticker symbol", "Add ticker"))
            {
                string result = prompt.Result;
                result = result.ToUpper();
                if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(result))
                {
                    do_Things(result);
                    _cancellationToken = new CancellationTokenSource();
                    _runningTask = StartTimer(() => do_Things(result), _cancellationToken);
                }
            }
        }
    
        private void onCancelClick()
        {
            _cancellationToken.Cancel();
        }
    
    
        public async Task<string> getStockPrices(string symbol)
        {
            try
            {
                var securities = await Yahoo.Symbols(symbol).Fields(Field.RegularMarketPrice).QueryAsync();
                var aapl = securities[symbol];
                var price = aapl[Field.RegularMarketPrice];
                return symbol   " $"   price;
    
            }
            catch
            {
                return "404";
            }
        }
    
        private async Task StartTimer(Action action, CancellationTokenSource cancellationTokenSource)
        {
            try
            {
                while (!cancellationTokenSource.IsCancellationRequested)
                {
                    await Task.Delay(1000, cancellationTokenSource.Token);
                    action();
                }
            }
            catch (OperationCanceledException) { }
        }
    
    
        public async void do_Things(string result)
        {
            var price = await getStockPrices(result);
            var label = new Label() { Name = result, Text = result   " $"   price };
            flowLayoutPanel2.BeginInvoke(new Action(() => flowLayoutPanel2.Controls.Add(label)));
        }
    }
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