How to use WPF Background Worker

Question

In my application I need to perform a series of initialization steps, these take 7-8 seconds to complete during which my UI becomes unresponsive. To resolve this I perform the initialization in a separate thread:

public void Initialization()
{
    Thread initThread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(InitializationThread));
    initThread.Start();
}

public void InitializationThread()
{
    outputMessage("Initializing...");
    //DO INITIALIZATION
    outputMessage("Initialization Complete");
}

I have read a few articles about the BackgroundWorker and how it should allow me to keep my application responsive without ever having to write a thread to perform lengthy tasks but I haven't had any success trying to implement it, could anyone tell how I would do this using the BackgroundWorker?

Answer 1

1. Add using

   using System.ComponentModel;
   

2. Declare Background Worker:

   private readonly BackgroundWorker worker = new BackgroundWorker();
   

3. Subscribe to events:

   worker.DoWork += worker_DoWork;
   worker.RunWorkerCompleted += worker_RunWorkerCompleted;
   

4. Implement two methods:

   private void worker_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
   {
       // run all background tasks here
   }
   
   private void worker_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, 
                                              RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
   {
       //update ui once worker complete his work
   }
   

5. Run worker async whenever your need.

   worker.RunWorkerAsync();
   

6. Track progress (optional, but often useful)

   a) subscribe to ProgressChanged event and use ReportProgress(Int32) in DoWork

   b) set worker.WorkerReportsProgress = true; (credits to @zagy)