Lately, I have written a lot of multithreaded code in C#. I use the ThreadPool class object to launch and manage many parallel threads - mostly for TCP communications with clients application. It automatically throttles the numbers of active threads by the number of processors. Unfortunately, the ThreadPool class was written before .NET 2 and therefore it does not take advantage of generics and you end up casting function methods and callback parameters back and forth. It can be a bit messy.
However, you can simply things with the following helper class:
static class ThreadPoolHelper
{
public delegate void Function();
public static void Execute(Function function)
{
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new WaitCallback(Call), (object)function);
}
private static void Call(object o)
{
((Function)o)();
}
}
With this code, to create a thread in the pool, you simple use:
TheadPoolHelper.Execute(someFunction);
Where someFunction is the name of a function method which does not have any parameters.
If you need to pass a parameter, here's the helper class for that too:
static class ThreadPoolHelperWithParam<T>
{
public delegate void Function(T param);
public static void Execute(Function function, T param)
{
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new WaitCallback(Call), new KeyValuePair<object, T>((object)function, param));
}
private static void Call(object o)
{
KeyValuePair<object, T> lObject = (KeyValuePair<object, T>)o;
((Function)lObject.Key)(lObject.Value);
}
}
Now you can also pass an object of any type, like this:
ThreadPoolHelperWithParam<someObjectType>.Execute(someMethod, someObject);
Where the someObjectType is the type of object you are passing, and someObject with actual object you wish to pass as a parameter. Simple!