The trick is to initialize the thread STA, start the thread message pump and use a dispatcher to send code to the thread for execution.
Use the following code to roll a progress indicator. Not shown is the ProgressDialog class which for me is a XAML window that exposes a progress bar (named bar) and a label (named label)
class ProgressIndicator
{
Thread t;
ProgressDialog progdialog;
bool running = false;
public void Start()
{
t = new Thread(ThreadFunc);
t.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA); // set the thread to STA
t.Start();
while (!running) ; // block until the thread is ready to accept updates
}
public void UpdateProgress(double Progress, String label)
{
progdialog.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(
(System.Windows.Forms.MethodInvoker)delegate() { progdialog.bar.Value = Progress; progdialog.label.Content = label; }
);
}
public void Stop()
{
try
{
progdialog.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(
(System.Windows.Forms.MethodInvoker)delegate() { progdialog.Close(); }
);
t.Abort();
t.Join();
}
catch (Exception)
{
}
finally
{
t = null;
}
}
protected void ThreadFunc()
{
progdialog = new ProgressDialog();
progdialog.Show();
progdialog.Closed += (sender2, e2) =>
progdialog.Dispatcher.InvokeShutdown(); // if main window closes...
progdialog.bar.Maximum = 1; // I always like dealing with 0 -> 1 progress
running = true;
System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.Run(); // start the message pump
}
}
Copy and paste the code and implement the ProgressDialog class with a progress bar named bar and a label named label and this should let you start and update a progress bar in a second UI thread.
