I would like to create a custom FunctionPlotter component that is based on the JavaFx WebEngine. My plots will be shown in a browser. Before I execute my plot commands I have to wait until the browser has been initialized (it loads d3.js). Currently I do so by putting my plot expressions in a Runnable and pass that runnable to the FunctionPlotter. (The FunctionPlotter passes the runnable to the loading finished hook of the browser):
private FunctionPlotter plotter;
...
Runnable plotRunnable = ()->{
plotter.plot("x^2");
}
plotter = new FunctionPlotter(plotRunnable);
However I would prefer following (blocking) work flow for the usage of my FunctionPlotter component:
Functionplotter plotter = new FunctionPlotter();
plotter.plot("x^2")
=> The FunctionPlotter should automatically wait until the wrapped browser has been initialized.
How should I do this in an JavaFx Application?
Inside the FunctionPlotter I could do something like
private Boolean isInitialized = false
...
ReadOnlyObjectProperty<State> state = webEngine.getLoadWorker().stateProperty();
state.addListener((obs, oldState, newState) -> {
boolean isSucceeded = (newState == Worker.State.SUCCEEDED);
if (isSucceeded) {
isInitialized = true;
}
});
webEngine.loadContent(initialBrowserContent);
waitUntilInitialLoadingIsFinished();
My actual question is how the method on the last line could be implemented. If I use following code, the application will wait for ever:
private void waitUntilBrowserIsInitialized() {
while(!isInitialized){
try {
Thread.sleep(100);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
}
}
I know that there is stuff like JavaFx Tasks, Platform.runLater(), Service, CountdownLatch (JavaFX working with threads and GUI) but those did not help me (= I did not get it working). How can I wait in the main Thread until a Runnable is finished?
Here someone says that the JavaFx Application thread should never be blocked:
Make JavaFX application thread wait for another Thread to finish
Any other suggestions?
Edit
Related question: JavaFX/SWT WebView synchronous loadcontent()
I decided to wrap the plot functionality in an internal queue of plot instructions. The command
plotter.plot("x^2");
will not actually execute the plot but add a plot instruction to the queue. After the browser has been initialized, that queue will be worked through and the plot commands will be executed with a delay. While the browser is initializing I will show some kind of progress bar.
If you know a solution that does not need this delayed execution work around please let me know.
Related
This question already has answers here:
How do I update the GUI from another thread?
(47 answers)
Closed 1 year ago.
Currently I am creating a background STA thread to keep the UI responsive but it slows down my function calls on the main thread.
Based on this thread How to update progress bar while working in the UI thread I tried the following but the UI only gets updated after all of the work has finished. I tried playing around with the Dispatcher priorities but none of them seem to work.
What I also tried is adding _frmPrg.Refresh() to my Progress callback but this does not seem to change anything.
Dim oProgress = New Progress(Of PrgObject)(Sub(runNumber)
_frmPrg.Invoke((Sub()
_frmPrg.Status = runNumber
End Sub))
End Sub)
System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.CurrentDispatcher.BeginInvoke(Sub()
DoLongRunningWork(oProgress, _cancellationToken)
End Sub, System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherPriority.Background)
I can't really help you with your problem, but I'll try to clarify what happens in your posted code.
DoLongRunningWork will be invoked through Dispatcher on the UI thread, when the UI thread is not busy. But once started, it will block the UI thread until it completes. So you can't show a progress this way. Your single chance is, to let DoLongRunningWork run on a background thread. That brings you nothing, if the long-running methods come from office objects, which must be accessed from the UI thread...
The Progress class (see the remarks section) invokes your event handler on the UI thread automatically, so you don't need _frmPrg.Invoke in your event handler.
Maybe you can start a STAthread for your progress form and show it from there. The instance of your Progress class must be created in this thread too, but not before your form is shown to ensure, that the thread becomes a WindowsFormsSynchronisationContext (or you set one explicitly after starting the thread). A plain SynchronisationContext won't work!
At least you get updates in your form this way, but the UI thread of the office app will still be blocked. And of course, any action you make with your progress form must be invoked on the UI thread, if accessing office objects.
After reading some other posts, I decided to suggest another solution. My previous answer still contains usable information, so I'll leave it there. I'm not familiar with VB.NET syntax, so the samples are in C#. I have tested the code in a VSTO plugin for PowerPoint, but it should run in any office application.
Forget the Progress class and background threads. Run everything on the UI thread!
Now use some async code. To stay on the UI thread, we need a "good" SynchronizationContext.
private static void EnsureWinFormsSyncContext()
{
// Ensure that we have a "good" SynchronisationContext
// See https://stackoverflow.com/a/32866156/10318835
if (SynchronizationContext.Current is not WindowsFormsSynchronizationContext)
SynchronizationContext.SetSynchronizationContext(new WindowsFormsSynchronizationContext());
}
This is the event handler of a button. Note the manually added async keyword. The SynchronizationContext.Current gets resetted again and again, so ensure the good one in the EventHandler:
private async void OnButtonClick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
EnsureWinFormsSyncContext();
// Return from event handler, ensure that we are really async
// See https://stackoverflow.com/a/22645114/10318835
await Task.Yield();
await RunLongOnUIThread();
}
This will be the worker method, also running on the UI thread.
private async Task RunLongOnUIThread()
{
//Dummy code, replace it with your code
var pres = addIn.Application.Presentations.Add();
for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
{
Debug.Print("Creating slide {0} on thread {1}", i, Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId);
// If you have some workloads that can be run on a background
// thread, execute them with await Task.Run(...).
try
{
var layout = pres.Designs[1].SlideMaster.CustomLayouts[1];
var slide = pres.Slides.AddSlide(i + 1, layout);
var shape = slide.Shapes.AddLabel(Microsoft.Office.Core.MsoTextOrientation.msoTextOrientationHorizontal, 0, 15 * i, 100, 15);
shape.TextFrame.TextRange.Text = $"Text on slide {i + 1}";
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Debug.Print("I don't know what am I doing here, I'm not familiar with PowerPoint... {0}", ex);
}
// Update UI
statusLabel.Text = $"Slide {i + 1} done";
progressBar1.Value = i + 1;
// This is the magic! It gives the main thread the opportunity to update the UI.
// It also processes input messages so you need to disable unwanted buttons etc.
await IdleYield();
}
}
The following method is for Windows Forms Applications where it does the job perfect. I've tried it also in PowerPoint. If you are facing problems, try the WPF flavour with await Dispatcher.Yield(DispatcherPriority.ApplicationIdle) instead of await IdleYield().
private static Task IdleYield()
{
var idleTcs = new TaskCompletionSource<bool>();
void handler(object s, EventArgs e)
{
Application.Idle -= handler;
idleTcs.SetResult(true);
}
Application.Idle += handler;
return idleTcs.Task;
}
Here are the (clickable) links to the answers that I used (I can't put them in the code-blocks...).
Incorrect async/await working, Excel events in Excel Application Level Add-in
When would I use Task.Yield()?
Task.Yield - real usages?
If in your real code something runs not as expected, check the thread you are running on and SynchronizationContext.Current.
In my Android application I have code that should run periodically in its own coroutine and should be cancelable.
for this I have the following functions:
startJob(): Initializes the job, sets up invokeOnCompletion() and starts the work loop in the respective scope
private fun startJob() {
if (::myJob.isInitialized && myJob.isActive) {
return
}
myJob= Job()
myJob.invokeOnCompletion {
it?.message.let {
var msg = it
if (msg.isNullOrBlank()) {
msg = "Job stopped. Reason unknown"
}
myJobCompleted(msg)
}
}
CoroutineScope(Dispatchers.IO + myJob).launch {
workloop()
}
}
workloop(): The main work loop. Do some work in a loop with a set delay in each iteration:
private suspend fun workloop() {
while (true) {
// doing some stuff here
delay(setDelayInMilliseconds)
}
}
myJobCompleted: do some finalizing. For now simply log a message for testing.
private fun myJobCompleted(msg: String) {
try {
mainActivityReference.logToGUI(msg)
}
catch (e:Exception){
println("debug: " + e.message)
}
}
Running this and calling myJob.Cancel() will throw the following exception in myJobCompleted():
debug: Only the original thread that created a view hierarchy can touch its views.
I'm curious as to why this code isn't running on the main thread, since startJob() IS called from the main thread?
Furthermore: is there a option similar to using a CancellationTokenSource in c#, where the job is not immediately cancelled, but a cancellation request can be checked each iteration of the while loop?
Immediately breaking off the job, regardless of what it is doing (although it will pretty much always be waiting for the delay on cancellation) doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
It is not the contract of Job.invokeOnCompletion to run on the same thread where Job is created. Moreover, such a contract would be impossible to implement.
You can't expect an arbitrary piece of code to run on an arbitrary thread, just because there was some earlier method invocation on that thread. The ability of the Android main GUI thread to execute code submitted from the outside is special, and involves the existence a top-level event loop.
In the world of coroutines, what controls thread assignment is the coroutine context, while clearly you are outside of any context when creating the job. So the way to fix it is to explicitly launch(Dispatchers.Main) a coroutine from within invokeOnCompletion.
About you question on cancellation, you can use withContext(NonCancellable) to surround the part of code you want to protect from cancellation.
I was trying to update the recycler view content from a background thread in Kotlin. I am not using AsyncTask.
Here is my code, i want to know if there is any better way than this:
In my MainActivity, i have progressThread as a member variable.
var progressThread = Thread()
Then in my method where i want to run the thread first i am defining it...like
progressThread = Thread (
Runnable {
kotlin.run {
try {
while (i <= 100 && !progressThread.isInterrupted) {
Thread.sleep(200)
//Some Logic
runOnUiThread {
//this runs in ui thread
}
i++
}
}catch (e:InterruptedException){
progressThread.interrupt()
}
}
})
after that i am starting it in the same method as
progressThread.start()
and for stopping it, i have a listener to cancel the progress and in the callback of that listener, i have written:
progressThread.interrupt()
Updated
Coroutines are stable now,: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/coroutines-overview.html
Old Answer
Yes, you can do this using doAsync from kotlin anko library that is fairly simple and easy to use.
add following line in module level gradle file:
compile "org.jetbrains.anko:anko-commons:0.10.0"
Code example:
val future = doAsync {
// do your background thread task
result = someTask()
uiThread {
// use result here if you want to update ui
updateUI(result)
}
}
code block written in uiThread will only be executed if your Activity or Fragment is in foreground mode (It is lifecycle aware). So if you are trying to stop thread because you don't want your ui code to execute when Activity is in background, then this is an ideal case for you.
As you can check doAsync returns a Future object so you can cancel the background task, by cancel() function:
future.cancel(true)
pass true if you want to stop the thread even when it has started executing.
If you have more specialised case to handle stopping case then you can do the same thing as in your example.
You can use Kotlin Coroutines also but its in Experimental phase, still you can try it out: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/coroutines.html
I am using LWUIT ResrouceEditor(latest SVN code revision 1513) to generate a UI State machine.
I want to show a wait screen when a long running command is invoked by a user using a button on the current form. I believe I can use the asynchronous option when linking the command on the button. I have setup a form in which I have a button which should invoke the asynchronous command. In command selection for that button, I have set the action to show the wait screen form and have marked the command as asynchronous. However when I use the asynchronous option, the code shows the wait screen, but after that it throws a NullPointerException.
As per my understanding, once you mark a command as asynchronous, it will call the following methods from a different thread where you can handle its processing.
protected void asyncCommandProcess(Command cmd, ActionEvent sourceEvent);
protected void postAsyncCommand(Command cmd, ActionEvent sourceEvent);
However this methods are not getting called and it throws a NullPointerException.
When I looked at the LWUIT code, in UIBuilder.java(lineno. 2278), I see that it constructs the new thread for an asynchronous command as follows:
new Thread(new FormListener(currentAction, currentActionEvent, f)).start();
But when running it through Debugger I see that currentAction and currentActionEvent are always null. And hence when the FormListener thread starts running, it never calls the above two async command processing methods. Please see the listing of the run() method in the UIBuilder.java(line no. 2178)
public void run() {
if(currentAction != null) {
if(Display.getInstance().isEdt()) {
postAsyncCommand(currentAction, currentActionEvent);
} else {
asyncCommandProcess(currentAction, currentActionEvent);
// wait for the destination form to appear before moving back into the LWUIT thread
waitForForm(destForm);
}
} else {
if(Display.getInstance().isEdt()) {
if(Display.getInstance().getCurrent() != null) {
exitForm(Display.getInstance().getCurrent());
}
Form f = (Form)createContainer(fetchResourceFile(), nextForm);
beforeShow(f);
f.show();
postShow(f);
} else {
if(processBackground(destForm)) {
waitForForm(destForm);
}
}
}
}
In the above method, since the currentAction is null, it always goes into the else statement and since the nextForm is also null, it causes the NullPointerException.
On further look at the UIBuilder.java code, I noticed what is causing the NullPointer exception. It seems when the FormListner is created, it is passed currentAction and currentActionEvent, however they are null at that time. Instead the code should be changed as follows(starting at line 2264):
if(action.startsWith("#")) {
action = action.substring(1);
Form currentForm = Display.getInstance().getCurrent();
if(currentForm != null) {
exitForm(currentForm);
}
Form f = (Form)createContainer(fetchResourceFile(), action);
beforeShow(f);
/* Replace following with next lines for fixing asynchronous command
if(Display.getInstance().getCurrent().getBackCommand() == cmd) {
f.showBack();
} else {
f.show();
}
postShow(f);
new Thread(new FormListener(currentAction, currentActionEvent, f)).start();
*/
new Thread(new FormListener(cmd, evt, f)).start();
return;
}
Can lwuit development team take a look at the above code, review and fix it. After I made the above change, the asynchronous command processing methods were invoked.
Thank you.
Thanks for the information, its probably better to use the issue tracker for things like this (at http://lwuit.java.net).
I will make a similar change although I don't understand why you commented out the form navigation portion.
To solve your use case of a wait screen we have a much simpler solution: Next Form. Just show the wait screen and in it define the "Next Form" property.
This will trigger a background thread to be invoked (processBackground callback) and only when the background thread completes the next form will be shown.
I'm writing a small programm where JavaFx acts as a viewer and controler and let Java do the other hard work. I can start multiple threads from Javafx however, I'm not able to stop them. If I try to use .stop(), the threads are still running.
Here is one of them:
public var sleepTask_connect;
function LogOutAction(): Void {
sleepTask_connect.stop();
}
function LogInAction(): Void {
var listener = FXListener_interface_connection {
override function callback(errorCode, errorMessage): Void {
//do something
if(errorCode != 200){
setIcn(errorMessage);
}
}
}
sleepTask_connect = FXListener_connection {
listener: listener
};
sleepTask_connect.start();
}
Use JavaTaskBase to implement you Java thread. There is a stop method to kill the thread. Here is an example of how you use it.
I've had better luck with the JFXtras XWorker component for threading. See http://jfxtras.googlecode.com/svn/site/javadoc/release-0.6/org.jfxtras.async/org.jfxtras.async.XWorker.html.
However in general in order for your thread to respond to cancel/stop requests, you have to check the canceled or stopped flag in your code during your "do something" section. This works if your thread is in an infinite loop for example, or if you just have a series of long running processes you can check for canceled/stopped in between them. Alternatively, if your code calls some blocking method (like sockets or a blocking queue), then most of these will throw an InterruptedException when the thread is canceled.