Background: I am using OmniThreadLibrary to load batch mode ADO stored procedures in the background. I am doing some slightly dodgy stuff by swapping the connection after opening the SP but that seems to be quite reliable. I'm using PostMessage to send messages back to the calling form and that works in my test applications. Primoz' comms channels work for me, I'm using those for inter-thread comms but for our main application I'm trying to avoid that dependency by using standard PostMessage calls as we do elsewhere in the app.
Problem: Unfortunately when I put this into our main application the PostMessage calls in the thread start failing with 1400:invalid window handle.
I have liberally added extra PostMessage calls and logging code to try to locate the problem, but I'm out of ideas now. The code is boilerplate:
const WM_PW_ADLQUEUEEMPTY = WM_USER + 11;
...
if PostMessage (OwnerHandle, WM_PW_ADLPROGRESS, QueueID, 10) then
pwDebugLog ('TADLQueue.Run WM_PW_ADLPROGRESS send to ' + IntToHex (OwnerHandle, 8) + ' (IsWindow '+BoolToStr(IsWindow(OwnerHandle),true)+') OK for Queue ' + IntToStr (QueueID))
else
pwDebugLog ('TADLQueue.Run WM_PW_ADLPROGRESS send to ' + IntToHex (OwnerHandle, 8) + ' (IsWindow '+BoolToStr(IsWindow(OwnerHandle),true)+') failed for Queue ' + IntToStr (QueueID));
But the log for a series of calls is not very revealing to me. note that the four hex digits after the time is the thread id from GetCurrentThreadID.
15:41:53.221 1614 TpwAsyncDataLoader.RunQueue WM_PW_ADLPROGRESS send to 00A5110C (IsWindow True) OK for Queue -6
15:41:53.265 13B4 TADLQueue.Run WM_PW_ADLPROGRESS send to 00A5110C (IsWindow True) OK for Queue -6
15:41:53.554 13B4 TADLQueueManager.WriteSysErrorMessageToDatabase Postmessage 00A5110C (IsWindow False) failed with 1400 Invalid window handle
Can anyone shed some light on this? I'm confused at how a window handle can become invalid while I'm looking at it, but that's what it looks like to me.
The one thing I can think of is that the form I'm showing here isn't processing messages and I'm seeing a "message queue full" failure rather than the IsWindow(handle) failure that it looks like. How can I test for that?
There are cases where a handle gets recreated, most notably when you change window flags. This might be what's happening in your application.
All I found so far about recreating windows handle is this post from Allen Bauer but I'm certain reading a more detailed one written by Peter Below. Unfortunatly I can't seem to find that one.
Finally, you need to be aware of cases
where your handle may need to get
recreated. This can happen if the
surrounding form or the parent
component's handle goes through a
recreate process. Up until more recent
releases of Windows, the only way to
change some window flags was to
destroy the handle and recreate with
new flags in the CreateWindowEx()
call. There are many components that
still do this. You know if you're in a
recreate situation by checking
(csRecreating in ControlState).
Edit
Not actually the posts from Peter I had in mind but it might give you some fresh ideas.
The form will not have a handle until
you show it the first time (unless
something in the form load sequence
request the handle) but the handle is
not destroyed when you hide the form
and unless you do something that
forces the form to recreate the
handle, e.g. change its border style
or border icons, or call RecreateWnd
yourself the handle will stay the
same.
It may not be desirable but it cannot
be avoided, at least not the way
Delphi drag&dock is currently
implemented. When you dock the dragged
form to another form it becomes a
control (with WS_CHILD window style)
and that means that its window handle
has to be destroyed and recreated with
the new style. And destroying the
window handle of a container control
automatically destroys the handles for
all child controls as well.
and
There is also the fact that the forms
window handle is destroyed and
recreated when you assign to its
Parent property. This also destroys
and recreates the handles for all
controls on the form.
I had a similar issue (but in VC++2010), and I did not find the solution on any forum, so I post it here, hope this will help:
Issue:
Creating a thread,
Passing the HWnd handle
In the thread, PostMessage
throws a 1400 error (invalid handle), although the pointer was equal
with the handle as seen from UI thread (with GetSafeHWnd()).
Solution:
Do not pass the handle, but the parent CDialog(Ex) class
This class has a m_hWnd member that will do the job
Here is a (Cpp) example, sorry for the cast mess.
// In the worker thread
ThreadParam *threadParam = (ThreadParam*)param
// This is ugly because my pointer is a void *, to avoid one more forward declaration
CCoreGenDlg *dlg = static_cast<CCoreGenDlg *>(threadParam->ptr);
// Post
bool b = PostMessage(dlg->m_hWnd ,1221,0,(LPARAM)message);
Cheers'
Related
I am writing a component that reads data from a specific filetype. Currently, it has a property for filepath - I would like for this block to quit as hard as possible when passed an invalid file/no file found.
Throwing an exception causes it to stop execution, but also deletes the block from the chalkboard while I am testing (?), which makes me think there is a more "approved" way to do it.
My current solution is something like:
LOG_ERROR( MyReader_i, "Unable to open file at " + Filepath );
return FINISH;
Is there another way to stop if something is wrong, that will hopefully stop all downstream processing as well?
Have you taken a look at the Data Reader component in the basic components? It also has a file path as an input. It deals with this during the onConfigure call as shown below:
def onconfigure_prop_InputFile(self, oldvalue, newvalue):
self.InputFile = newvalue
if not os.path.exists(self.InputFile):
self._log.error("InputFile path provided can not be accessed")
And then again in the service function by returning NOOP.
def process(self):
if (self.Play == False):
return NOOP
if not (os.path.exists(self.InputFile)):
return NOOP
This isn't the only way to deal with invalid input however. It's a design decision that is up to the developer.
If you'd like additional components down stream to know about an issue elsewhere in the chain, you have a few options. You could use the End of Stream bit, available in bulkio port implementations, to signal to down stream components that there is no additional data. They can then use this information to clean up and shut down. You could also use messaging to send a message out to an event channel and anyone who has subscribed to this event channel can be made aware of the message. Again, it's a design decision.
I am writing a program which need to listen the user keyboard stroks.
I use function XGrabKeyboard() and this is my code:
XGrabKeyboard(pDisplay, DefaultRootWindow(pDisplay), True, GrabModeAsync, GrabModeAsync, CurrentTime);
XEvent event;
while (true)
{
XNextEvent(pDisplay, &event);
switch (event.type)
{
...
}
}
But it causes the keyboard and cursor to be frozen.
I looked up the man page, it only says: "The third parameter specifies a Boolean value that indicates whether the keyboard events are to be reported as usual."
I tried both true or false or the 3rd param, both GrabModeAsync and GrabModeSync for the 4th and 5th param, but it doesn't work.
After calling XGrabKeyboard(), the keyboard is frozen and mouse click doesn't response.
Any ideas?
XGrabKeyboard() (if successful - be sure to check the return value), redirects all key events to your client.
So if your "..." inside the while(true) does not properly handle those key events, or does not ever ungrab (XUngrabKeyboard) or release sync events (XAllowEvents, only applies to GrabModeSync), then the keyboard would appear to lock up.
The boolean parameter is owner_events which indicates whether to report key events always to the window provided to XGrabKeyboard, or report them to the window they normally would have gone to without the grab. Typically you want False (report to the grab window).
For typical uses of XGrabKeyboard (I don't know your use-case) the parameters you would want are:
grab window = some window in your app that relates to the reason for the grab
owner_events=False to send all events to that window
pointer_mode=Async to not screw with the pointer
keyboard_mode=Async to just redirect all key events and avoid need for AllowEvents
time=the timestamp from the event triggering the grab, ideally, or one generated by changing a property and grabbing the timestamp off the PropertyNotify
But, it depends. To give any definitive answer you'd probably need to post a compilable program, I think the bug is likely in the "..." part of your code. Try narrowing your app down to a single-file test case that can be run by others perhaps. Or explain more why you are grabbing and what you're trying to accomplish in the big picture.
I cant help with the XGrabKeyboard function - I havent used it before and dont know how it works - but I can suggest another way of getting the keyboard events.
When creating my window using XCreateWindow, the last argument is a XSetWindowAttributes object. This object has a member event_mask, which you can use to choose which events your window will receive.
I set mine like this:
XSetWindowAttributes setWindAttrs
setWindAttrs.event_mask = ExposureMask
| KeyPressMask
| KeyReleaseMask
| ButtonPressMask
| ButtonReleaseMask;
That will mean you receive events for keyboard key presses and mouse button clicks if you pass this object to XCreateWindow on window creation.
Also another note you can use XPending(pDisplay) to check if there are still events waiting to be handled - so it could replace true in your while(true) line.
Edit: Also your freezing issue could be that you dont return false anywhere in your while loop? It may be stuck in an infinite loop, unless you just removed that bit for the post. Try replacing true with xpending as I suggested above and it may fix the issue, or just returning false after handling the event, but this would only handle one event per frame rather than handling all the currently pending events like XPending would do, and I assume that is what you want to do.
I need help how to unfreeze my dialog box. I'm using MFC and I have an infinite loop I want to execute when a button is pressed. However, the dialog box freezes when the infinite loop starts. Now I looked at this thread where someone was having a similar problem.
Unfortunately I tried multithreading but I found out that It can't work for me because I'm using an api that uses OLE automation and I'm getting an unhandled memory exception. I think this is because program uses the serial port and i read somewhere you can only use the handle to the serial port in one thread.
My program is simply to see if someone has dialed in to my modem and wait for them to send me a file, then hangup. Here is my loop.
while(1)
{
//get rid of input buffer
ts->_this->m_pHAScript->haReleaseRemoteInput();
ts-> _this->textBox->SetWindowTextA("thread Commence");
//wait for connected
if(success = ts->_this->m_pHAScript->haWaitForString("CONNECT",timeout))
{
//getFile
if(success = ts->_this->m_pHAScript->haWaitForXfer(5000))
{
//hangup
ts->_this->haTypeText("+++ath\r");
}
}
}
Is there a way to unfreeze the dialog box?
Add this code inside while loop:
MSG msg;
while(PeekMessage(&msg, GetSafeHwnd(), 0, 0, PM_REMOVE))
{
DispatchMessage(&msg);
}
The GUI in Windows relies on a message loop - somewhere in your code, either explicitly or hidden in a framework, there's a loop that checks for a message in a queue and processes it. If anything blocks the code from returning to that loop, the GUI gets frozen.
There are a few ways around this. One was given by David Brabant, essentially duplicating the loop. Another is to start a new "worker" thread that runs the blocking operation independently. If your message loop has a function that it calls when it is idle, i.e. no more messages are in the queue, you can do some processing there; that's not possible in your example however.
I have a problem.
I have a VCL application using a thread. This thread does some calculations and calls a MainForm's method through Synchronize(). It all works just fine, I have a "Start" button, which creates and runs the thread and a "Stop" button which stops and frees it. No errors, no nothing.
But for some reason when I close the application and I've run the thread I get a EOSError 1400 - Invalid window handle. I've breakpointed the OnClose procedure and the only thing I do there is saving an ini file, no error in that, when I trace further (using F7), I get to the very end (Application.Run; end.), after "calling" the end. I get the error, so there is no specific line of code raising it.
I hope the question is somewhat clear and I hope it's solvable, because just ignoring the error seems a bit unclean.
Thanks inb4
ANSWER
This error occured to me when the Execute method of a thread was called, it looked like this:
procedure TRunThread.Execute;
var (...)
begin
while not Terminated do begin
(...)
MainForm.Memo1.Lines.Add('Some text'); // Even though this call worked fine during
//the application running, it caused errors on shutting the app down.
// For acccessing GUI elements, it's necessary to use Synchronize()
(...)
end;
end;
A possible reason is some unsynchronized access to GUI from the thread. You said that the thread does not do it, but without seeing the TRunThread.Execute source code that looks like the best guess.
I had the same problem, error code 5 Access is denied. This turned out to related to a thread started to test an internet connection on an embedded panel (using BeginThread). If the user exits the form (which is testing the internet connection) immediately after displaying the form, the AV occurs.
On my development PC, the internet connection test was successful...and so fast I never saw the problem! After struggling for several hours, I finally tracked it down to this thread and reproduced it by disconnecting my network cable.
The solution was straightforward: When exiting the form (eg. in the FormDestroy event) ensure the thread is definitely not running before continuing.
is it possible to execute a crystal report (TCrpe component) from a Delphi non VCL main thread when Output = toWindow?
I execute reports from a background thread, and when Output is toPrinter or toExport, everything is fine.
I know that creating forms in a
Delphi non VCL main thread generally is a
bad idea.
When a Crystal
Report is executed, and Output=toWindow, the component creates the output
window on its own. So I cannot prevent that the window is created by the background thread.
So is there a clean way to
execute the report in a background
thread, and display the result in a
cleanly created form?
Version: Crystal11VCL7
The following code does not work:
procedure TMyThread.Execute;
var
cr: TCrpe;
begin
inherited;
cr:= TCrpe.Create(nil);
cr.ReportName:= 'C:\TestReport.rpt';
cr.Output:= toWindow;
cr.WindowParent:= Form1; //This is the main form
cr.Execute;
end;
It seems like the report will be created and immediately destroyed afterwards.
When I enter a message loop right after cr.Execute (while true do Application.ProcessMessages; - which is obviously a very bad idea), the report window is shown nicely.
Any idea, how to do it right? Or is it simply not possible? Thanks!
I haven't had any experience with Crystal for many years (thank goodness) but in the absence of any other reply I would consider approaching the problem from a different angle.
What I do is let the report form be created in the main thread - because, as you've said, it's not a good idea to do the VCL stuff in the background - but I generate all report /data/ in a background thread. Once the data is loaded then the thread signals the main form (or whatever) via a windows message and the report goes and connects up to the dataset/datasource.
Initially I display a blank label over the client area of the report window with a message saying something like 'Report loading...' then once the message is received it hides the label and attaches the data. Works really well here and keeps the UI responsive.