How to wait correctly until BackgroundWorker completes?

Question

Observe the following piece of code:

var handler = GetTheRightHandler();
var bw = new BackgroundWorker();
bw.RunWorkerCompleted += OnAsyncOperationCompleted;         


        

Answer 1

I was also looking for a suitable solution. I solved the waiting with an exclusive lock. The critical path in code are writing to a public container (here the console) and increasing or decreasing the workers. No thread should interfere while writing to this variable, otherwise the count is not guaranteed anymore.

public class Program
{
    public static int worker = 0;
    public static object lockObject = 0;

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {

        BackgroundworkerTest backgroundworkerTest = new BackgroundworkerTest();
        backgroundworkerTest.WalkDir("C:\\");
        while (backgroundworkerTest.Worker > 0)
        {
            // Exclusive write on console
            lock (backgroundworkerTest.ExclusiveLock)
            {
                Console.CursorTop = 4; Console.CursorLeft = 1;
                var consoleOut = string.Format("Worker busy count={0}", backgroundworkerTest.Worker);
                Console.Write("{0}{1}", consoleOut, new string(' ', Console.WindowWidth-consoleOut.Length));
            }
        }
    }
}

public class BackgroundworkerTest
{
    private int worker = 0;
    public object ExclusiveLock = 0;

    public int Worker
    {
        get { return this.worker; }
    }

    public void WalkDir(string dir)
    {
        // Exclusive write on console
        lock (this.ExclusiveLock)
        {
            Console.CursorTop = 1; Console.CursorLeft = 1;
            var consoleOut = string.Format("Directory={0}", dir);
            Console.Write("{0}{1}", consoleOut, new string(' ', Console.WindowWidth*3 - consoleOut.Length));
        }

        var currentDir = new System.IO.DirectoryInfo(dir);
        DirectoryInfo[] directoryList = null;
        try
        {
            directoryList = currentDir.GetDirectories();
        }
        catch (UnauthorizedAccessException unauthorizedAccessException)
        {
            // No access to this directory, so let's leave
            return;
        }

        foreach (var directoryInfo in directoryList)
        {
            var bw = new BackgroundWorker();

            bw.RunWorkerCompleted += (sender, args) =>
            {
                // Make sure that this worker variable is not messed up
                lock (this.ExclusiveLock)
                {
                    worker--;
                }
            };

            DirectoryInfo info = directoryInfo;
            bw.DoWork += (sender, args) => this.WalkDir(info.FullName);

            lock (this.ExclusiveLock)
            {
                // Make sure that this worker variable is not messed up
                worker++;
            }
            bw.RunWorkerAsync();
        }
    }
}