Send a backgroundworker to sleep while checking for cancellation

Question

I have a background worker which updates the GUI on a regular basis via ReportProgress.

The update occurs at regular intervals, every 5 seconds for example, or it c

Answer 1

Or even better, use the Reactive Extensions framework and have a "worker" observe a stream of interval events. The stream can then easily be disposed to stop generating new events, thus terminating the worker. Combine this with a cancellation disposable and you have one single disposable to stop both the interval timer and any worker doing its work:

var cancel = new BooleanDisposable();
var subscription = Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(20))
                             .ObserveOn(Scheduler.DispatcherScheduler)
                             .Subscribe(i => PerformWorkOnUI(cancel));
var uiWork = new CompositeDisposable(cancel, subscription);

To cancel the stream of timer events, you only have to dispose the composite cancellation/subscription:

uiWork.Dispose();

Clarification: ObserveOn(Scheduler.DispatcherScheduler) ensures that the subscription will be called on the dispatcher thread.