display Hourglass when application is busy

Question

For a view constructed using WPF, I want to change the mouse cursor to a hourglass when the application is busy and nonresponsive.

One solution is to add

Answer 1

Changing the cursor doesn't means the application will not respond to mouse and keyboard events after the long running task has finished. To avoid user missleading, I use the class below that removes all the keyboard and mouse messages from the application message queue.

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Windows.Input;

public class WpfHourGlass : IDisposable
{

    [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
    private struct POINTAPI
    {
        public int x;
        public int y;
    }

    [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
    private struct MSG
    {
        public int hwnd;
        public int message;
        public int wParam;
        public int lParam;
        public int time;
        public POINTAPI pt;
    }
    private const short PM_REMOVE = 0x1;
    private const short WM_MOUSELAST = 0x209;
    private const short WM_MOUSEFIRST = 0x200;
    private const short WM_KEYFIRST = 0x100;
    private const short WM_KEYLAST = 0x108;
    [DllImport("user32", EntryPoint = "PeekMessageA", CharSet = CharSet.Ansi, SetLastError = true, ExactSpelling = true)]
    private static extern int PeekMessage([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Struct)]
    ref MSG lpMsg, int hwnd, int wMsgFilterMin, int wMsgFilterMax, int wRemoveMsg);

    public WpfHourGlass()
    {
        Mouse.OverrideCursor = Cursors.Wait;
        bActivated = true;
    }
    public void Show(bool Action = true)
    {
        if (Action)
        {
            Mouse.OverrideCursor = Cursors.Wait;
        }
        else
        {
            Mouse.OverrideCursor = Cursors.Arrow;
        }

        bActivated = Action;

    }
    #region "IDisposable Support"
    // To detect redundant calls
    private bool disposedValue;
    private bool bActivated;
    // IDisposable
    protected virtual void Dispose(bool disposing)
    {
        if (!this.disposedValue)
        {
            if (disposing)
            {
                //remove todas as mensagens de mouse
                //e teclado que tenham sido produzidas
                //durante o processamento e estejam
                //enfileiradas
                if (bActivated)
                {
                    MSG pMSG = new MSG();
                    while (Convert.ToBoolean(PeekMessage(ref pMSG, 0, WM_KEYFIRST, WM_KEYLAST, PM_REMOVE)))
                    {
                    }
                    while (Convert.ToBoolean(PeekMessage(ref pMSG, 0, WM_MOUSEFIRST, WM_MOUSELAST, PM_REMOVE)))
                    {
                    }
                    Mouse.OverrideCursor = Cursors.Arrow;

                }
            }

            // TODO: free unmanaged resources (unmanaged objects) and override Finalize() below.
            // TODO: set large fields to null.
        }
        this.disposedValue = true;
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        // Do not change this code.  Put cleanup code in Dispose(ByVal disposing As Boolean) above.
        Dispose(true);
        GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
    }
    #endregion

}