CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#asp.netprocesslong-integer
pessi
pessi

Reputation: 681

long running process in asp.net C#

I have a web application that has a long running (resource intensive) process in the code behind and the end output is a pdf file (images to pdf conversion tool)

It runs fine..and since I am on a dedicated server, it is not at all a problem with respect to resources right now.

However, I wonder that the system would reach its resource limits if, there are more than 20 users processing at a time.

I have seen services online where the user enters their email and the processes are, I suppose, queued in the background and the results emailed with the 1st in 1st out method.

Can someone please give me a start on how to implement this kind of logic in asp.net applications using C#?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1924

Answers (4)

Nigje
Nigje

Reputation: 311

You need some workers to process your task in the background and send results. Due to @Klaus answer, I suggest using Hangfire. We use it for creating a background job inside our ASP app and doing a long-running process (ex: request for image processing).

Upvotes: 0

Ashish Prakash
Ashish Prakash

Reputation: 1

As Klaus rightly pointed out, we've to implement it using windows services
Addendum to his answer:
(i)Split the long running process into multiple tasks
(ii)For each task , create a separate console application & identity each app using applicationId.

enum ApplicationId:byte
{
  Router = 1,
  Task1 =  2,
  Task2 =  3,
  Task3 =  4,
  Task4 =  5,
  Email = 6
}

(iii)Call one application as Router. It'll move transactions from one application to another.
(iv)Now create a table with transactionId, nextAppId and any other relevant fields
(v)After completing the task, update the nextAppId in table
(vi)Schedule all the apps in windows task scheduler or use active batch server (commercially)
(vii)The last application 'Email' sends an e-mail with generated pdf as an attachment to the user

Hope this answers !!!!. Have a nice day!!!

Upvotes: 0

kemiller2002
kemiller2002

Reputation: 115488

You want to throttle the number of concurrent requests. You can create a separate application to handle the conversion process. Either a windows service or a scheduled task that runs at a regular interval.

  1. Log the requests to a queue, either to a database table or to MSMQ. You'll want to log it to some queue in case something happens with the program. Since you are going to handle the processes asynchronously, the user will never know if something went wrong, besides never receiving the file. This way you can restart the process if something happens and continue processing.
  2. Have the external application monitor the queue and processes request one at a time.
  3. When the process is finished notify the user the process is done and can download it at the web site, or just email the pdf to the user.

The great part about having an external program handle the conversion is that you can load the program on multiple machines to process the requests faster, and it/they don't have to slow down your web/app servers used to handle the website.

Upvotes: 0

Klaus Byskov Pedersen
Klaus Byskov Pedersen

Reputation: 120937

Such a system would consist of a windows service running on the server. The only thing the asp.net page does is to submit a request (with the relevant data) to the database. The windows service then monitors this table and processes all new requests.

Upvotes: 5

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