Accessing UI (Main) Thread safely in WPF

Question

I have an application which updates my datagrid each time a log file that I'm watching gets updated (Appended with new text) in the following manner:

private void DGAddRow(string name, FunctionType ft)
    {
                ASCIIEncoding ascii = new ASCIIEncoding();

    CommDGDataSource ds = new CommDGDataSource();

    int position = 0;
    string[] data_split = ft.Data.Split(' ');
    foreach (AttributeType at in ft.Types)
    {
        if (at.IsAddress)
        {

            ds.Source = HexString2Ascii(data_split[position]);
            ds.Destination = HexString2Ascii(data_split[position+1]);
            break;
        }
        else
        {
            position += at.Size;
        }
    }
    ds.Protocol = name;
    ds.Number = rowCount;
    ds.Data = ft.Data;
    ds.Time = ft.Time;

    dataGridRows.Add(ds); 

    rowCount++;
    }
    ...
    private void FileSystemWatcher()
    {
        FileSystemWatcher watcher = new FileSystemWatcher(Environment.CurrentDirectory);
        watcher.Filter = syslogPath;
        watcher.NotifyFilter = NotifyFilters.LastAccess | NotifyFilters.LastWrite
            | NotifyFilters.FileName | NotifyFilters.DirectoryName;
        watcher.Changed += new FileSystemEventHandler(watcher_Changed);
        watcher.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
    }

    private void watcher_Changed(object sender, FileSystemEventArgs e)
    {
        if (File.Exists(syslogPath))
        {
            string line = GetLine(syslogPath,currentLine);
            foreach (CommRuleParser crp in crpList)
            {
                FunctionType ft = new FunctionType();
                if (crp.ParseLine(line, out ft))
                {
                    DGAddRow(crp.Protocol, ft);
                }
            }
            currentLine++;
        }
        else
            MessageBox.Show(UIConstant.COMM_SYSLOG_NON_EXIST_WARNING);
    }

When the event is raised for the FileWatcher, because it creates a separate thread, when I try to run dataGridRows.Add(ds); to add the new row, the program just crashes without any warning given during debug mode.

In Winforms, this was easily solved by utilizing the Invoke function but I am not sure how to go about this in WPF.

Answer 1

The best way to go about it would be to get a SynchronizationContext from the UI thread and use it. This class abstracts marshalling calls to other threads, and makes testing easier (in contrast to using WPF's Dispatcher directly). For example:

class MyViewModel
{
    private readonly SynchronizationContext _syncContext;

    public MyViewModel()
    {
        // we assume this ctor is called from the UI thread!
        _syncContext = SynchronizationContext.Current;
    }

    // ...

    private void watcher_Changed(object sender, FileSystemEventArgs e)
    {
         _syncContext.Post(o => DGAddRow(crp.Protocol, ft), null);
    }
}

Note that using the Send method is usually not recommended - we'd be needlessly blocking a thread-pool thread waiting for the UI to update, rather than employing an async approach where we wait for UI updates using events (such as property and collection updates), and releasing that thread to do other work.

Answer 2

Use [Dispatcher.Invoke(DispatcherPriority, Delegate)] to change the UI from another thread or from background.

Step 1. Use the following namespaces

using System.Windows;
using System.Threading;
using System.Windows.Threading;

Step 2. Put the following line where you need to update UI

Application.Current.Dispatcher.Invoke(DispatcherPriority.Background, new ThreadStart(delegate
{
    //Update UI here
}));

Syntax

[BrowsableAttribute(false)]
public object Invoke(
  DispatcherPriority priority,
  Delegate method
)

Parameters

priority

Type: System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherPriority

The priority, relative to the other pending operations in the Dispatcher event queue, the specified method is invoked.

method

Type: System.Delegate

A delegate to a method that takes no arguments, which is pushed onto the Dispatcher event queue.

Return Value

Type: System.Object

The return value from the delegate being invoked or null if the delegate has no return value.

Version Information

Available since .NET Framework 3.0

Answer 3

You can use

Dispatcher.Invoke(Delegate, object[])

on the Application's (or any UIElement's) dispatcher.

You can use it for example like this:

Application.Current.Dispatcher.Invoke(new Action(() => { /* Your code here */ }));

or

someControl.Dispatcher.Invoke(new Action(() => { /* Your code here */ }));