Invoke Delegate

Question

Can anybody please explain this statement written on this link  Invoke Delegate     Executes the specified delegate on the thread that owns the control s underlying window handle   Can anybody explain what this means  especially the bold one  I am not able to get it clearly

User · Accepted Answer

The answer to this question lies in how C# Controls work

Controls in Windows Forms are bound to a specific thread and are not thread safe. Therefore, if you are calling a control's method from a different thread, you must use one of the control's invoke methods to marshal the call to the proper thread. This property can be used to determine if you must call an invoke method, which can be useful if you do not know what thread owns a control.

From Control.InvokeRequired

Effectively, what Invoke does is ensure that the code you are calling occurs on the thread that the control "lives on" effectively preventing cross threaded exceptions.

From a historical perspective, in .Net 1.1, this was actually allowed. What it meant is that you could try and execute code on the "GUI" thread from any background thread and this would mostly work. Sometimes it would just cause your app to exit because you were effectively interrupting the GUI thread while it was doing something else. This is the Cross Threaded Exception - imagine trying to update a TextBox while the GUI is painting something else.

Which action takes priority?
Is it even possible for both to happen at once?
What happens to all of the other commands the GUI needs to run?

Effectively, you are interrupting a queue, which can have lots of unforeseen consequences. Invoke is effectively the "polite" way of getting what you want to do into that queue, and this rule was enforced from .Net 2.0 onward via a thrown InvalidOperationException.

To understand what is actually going on behind the scenes, and what is meant by "GUI Thread", it's useful to understand what a Message Pump or Message Loop is.

This is actually already answered in the question "What is a Message Pump" and is recommended reading for understanding the actual mechanism that you are tying into when interacting with controls.

Other reading you may find useful includes:

What's up with Begin Invoke

One of the cardinal rules of Windows GUI programming is that only the thread that created a control can access and/or modify its contents (except for a few documented exceptions). Try doing it from any other thread and you'll get unpredictable behavior ranging from deadlock, to exceptions to a half updated UI. The right way then to update a control from another thread is to post an appropriate message to the application message queue. When the message pump gets around to executing that message, the control will get updated, on the same thread that created it (remember, the message pump runs on the main thread).

and, for a more code heavy overview with a representative sample:

Invalid Cross-thread Operations

// the canonical form (C# consumer)

public delegate void ControlStringConsumer(Control control, string text);  // defines a delegate type

public void SetText(Control control, string text) {
    if (control.InvokeRequired) {
        control.Invoke(new ControlStringConsumer(SetText), new object[]{control, text});  // invoking itself
    } else {
        control.Text=text;      // the "functional part", executing only on the main thread
    }
}

Once you have an appreciation for InvokeRequired, you may wish to consider using an extension method for wrapping these calls up. This is ably covered in the Stack Overflow question Cleaning Up Code Littered with Invoke Required.

There is also a further write up of what happened historically that may be of interest.

User · Answer

If you want to modify a control it must be done in the thread in which the control was created  This Invoke method allows you to execute methods in the associated thread  the thread that owns the control s underlying window handle    In below sample thread1 throws an exception because SetText1 is trying to modify textBox1 Text from another thread  But in thread2  Action in SetText2 is executed in the thread in which the TextBox was created  private void btn Click object sender  EvenetArgs e        var thread1   new Thread SetText1       var thread2   new Thread SetText2       thread1 Start        thread2 Start       private void SetText1          textBox1 Text    Test      private void SetText2          textBox1 Invoke new Action      gt  textBox1 Text    Test

User · Answer

It means that the delegate you pass is executed on the thread that created the Control object  which is the UI thread    You need to call this method when your application is multi-threaded and you want do some UI operation from a thread other than the UI thread  because if you just try to call a method on a Control from a different thread you ll get a System InvalidOperationException

User · Answer

In practical terms it means that the delegate is guaranteed to be invoked on the main thread  This is important because in the case of windows controls if you don t update their properties on the main thread then you either don t see the change  or the control raises an exception   The pattern is   void OnEvent object sender  EventArgs e       if  this InvokeRequired              this Invoke      gt  this OnEvent sender  e          return              do stuff  now you know you are on the main thread

User · Answer

this Invoke delegate  make sure that you are calling the delegate the argument to this Invoke   on main thread created thread    I can say a Thumb rule don t access your form controls except from main thread   May be the following lines make sense for using Invoke        private void SetText string text                   InvokeRequired required compares the thread ID of the            calling thread to the thread ID of the creating thread             If these threads are different  it returns true          if  this textBox1 InvokeRequired                           SetTextCallback d   new SetTextCallback SetText               this Invoke d  new object     text                       else                       this textBox1 Text   text                    There are situations though you create a Threadpool thread i e worker thread  it will run on main thread  It won t create a new thread coz main thread is available for processing further instructions  So First investigate whether the current running thread is main thread using this InvokeRequired if returns true the current code is running on worker thread so call      this Invoke d  new object     text      else directly update the UI control Here you are guaranteed that you are running the code on main thread

User · Answer

Invoke  MethodInvoker delegate  textBox1 Text    Test

User · Answer

Delegate are essentially inline Action s or Func lt T gt   You can declare a delegate outside the scope of a method which you are running or using a lambda expression   gt    because you run the delegate within a method  you run it on the thread which is being run for the current window application which is the bit in bold   Lambda example  int AddFiveToNumber int number      var d    int i   gt  i   5     d Invoke number

User · Answer

It means that the delegate will run on the UI thread  even if you call that method from a background worker or thread-pool thread  UI elements have thread affinity - they only like talking directly to one thread  the UI thread  The UI thread is defined as the thread that created the control instance  and is therefore associated with the window handle  But all of that is an implementation detail   The key point is  you would call this method from a worker thread so that you can access the UI  to change the value in a label  etc  - since you are not allowed to do that from any other thread than the UI thread

User · Answer

A control or window object in Windows Forms is just a wrapper around a Win32 window identified by a handle  sometimes called HWND   Most things you do with the control will eventually result in a Win32 API call that uses this handle  The handle is owned by the thread that created it  typically the main thread   and shouldn t be manipulated by another thread  If for some reason you need to do something with the control from another thread  you can use Invoke to ask the main thread to do it on your behalf   For instance  if you want to change the text of a label from a worker thread  you can do something like this   theLabel Invoke new Action      gt  theLabel Text    hello world from worker thread

[c#] Invoke(Delegate)

Examples related to c#

Examples related to winforms

Examples related to delegates

Examples related to invoke