CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#windows-servicestask-parallel-library
WRACK
WRACK

Reputation: 33

TPL inside Windows Service

I need to perform few tasks inside a Windows Service I am writing in parallel. I am using VS2013, .NET 4.5 and this thread Basic design pattern for using TPL inside windows service for C# shows that TPL is the way to go.

Below is my implementation. I was wondering if anyone can tell me if I have done it correctly!

public partial class FtpLink : ServiceBase
{
    private readonly CancellationTokenSource _cancellationTokenSource = new CancellationTokenSource();
    private readonly ManualResetEvent _runCompleteEvent = new ManualResetEvent(false);

    public FtpLink()
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        // Load configuration
        WebEnvironment.Instance.Initialise();
    }

    protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
    {
        Trace.TraceInformation("DatabaseToFtp is running");

        try
        {
            RunAsync(_cancellationTokenSource.Token).Wait();
        }
        finally
        {
            _runCompleteEvent.Set();
        }
    }

    protected override void OnStop()
    {
        Trace.TraceInformation("DatabaseToFtp is stopping");

        _cancellationTokenSource.Cancel();
        _runCompleteEvent.WaitOne();

        Trace.TraceInformation("DatabaseToFtp has stopped");
    }

    private async Task RunAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        while (!cancellationToken.IsCancellationRequested)
        {
            Trace.TraceInformation("Working");

            // Do the actual work
            var tasks = new List<Task>
            {
                Task.Factory.StartNew(() => new Processor().ProcessMessageFiles(), cancellationToken),
                Task.Factory.StartNew(() => new Processor().ProcessFirmware(), cancellationToken)
            };

            Task.WaitAll(tasks.ToArray(), cancellationToken);

            // Delay the loop for a certain time
            await Task.Delay(WebEnvironment.Instance.DatabasePollInterval, cancellationToken);
        }
    }
}

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1463

Answers (1)

Yuval Itzchakov
Yuval Itzchakov

Reputation: 149558

There are a few things i would do differently:

  1. OnStart should execute in a timely fashion. Common practice is to defer work to a background thread which is in charge of doing the actual work. You're actually doing that but blocking that thread with a call to Task.Wait, which kind of makes the offloading to a background thread useless, because execution becomes synchronous again.
  2. You're using the sync over async anti-pattern, this should be mostly avoided. Let the calling method invoke the work in parallel.
  3. I think you might be using the ManualResetEvent the other way around. You're wrapping your RunAsync method in a try-finally block, but you're only calling WaitOne from OnStop. I'm not really sure you need a lock here at all, it doesn't seem (from your current code) that this code is being invoked in parallel. Instead, you can store the Task returned by RunAsync in a field and wait on it to complete.
  4. You're using the blocking version, WaitAll. Instead, you could use the asynchronous version, Task.WhenAll, which can be asynchronously waited.

Upvotes: 2

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