How to "kill" background worker completely?

Question

I am writing a windows application that runs a sequence of digital IO actions repeatedly.

This sequence of actions starts when the user click a "START" button, and it is done by a background worker in backgroundWorker1_DoWork().

However, there are occasions when I get the "This backgroundworker is currently busy......." error message.

I am thinking of implementing the following in the code, by using a while loop to "kill" the background worker before starting another sequence of action:

if (backgroundWorker1.IsBusy == true)
{

    backgroundWorker1.CancelAsync();
    while (backgroundWorker1.IsBusy == true)
    {
        backgroundWorker1.CancelAsync();
    }

    backgroundWorker1.Dispose();

}

backgroundWorker1.RunWorkerAsync();

I think my main concern is, will the backgroundWorker1 be "killed" eventually? If it will, will it take a long time to complete it?

Will this coding get me into an infinite loop?

Answer 1

You can use something like this (for more information about aborting managed threads and about ThreadAbortException see "Plumbing the Depths of the ThreadAbortException Using Rotor" by Chris Sells):

public class AbortableBackgroundWorker : BackgroundWorker
{

    private Thread workerThread;

    protected override void OnDoWork(DoWorkEventArgs e)
    {
        workerThread = Thread.CurrentThread;
        try
        {
            base.OnDoWork(e);
        }
        catch (ThreadAbortException)
        {
            e.Cancel = true; //We must set Cancel property to true!
            Thread.ResetAbort(); //Prevents ThreadAbortException propagation
        }
    }


    public void Abort()
    {
        if (workerThread != null)
        {
            workerThread.Abort();
            workerThread = null;
        }
    }
}

Usage:

backgroundWorker1 = new AbortableBackgroundWorker();
//...
backgroundWorker1.RunWorkerAsync();

if (backgroundWorker1.IsBusy == true)
{
    backgroundWorker1.Abort();
    backgroundWorker1.Dispose();
}