Question

I created an application which has to periodically perform some tasks using threads. I am not sure if this is the best way for doing it so I would really appreciate if anyone could suggest a better way.

This is the way I did it:

This is the class which includes the functions for a continuous process (looking for inactive sessions and cleaning idle items):

public class SessionCleaner {     private SQLWorks sqlWorks;     public SessionCleaner()     {         sqlWorks = new SQLWorks();     }      private void cleanIdleSessions()     {         //this function deletes sessions from database         sqlWorks.CleanIdleSessions(10);     }        //this is an endless loop for executing the cleaning every 5 seconds     public void DoCleanIdleSessions()     {         while(true)         {             cleanIdleSessions();             Thread.Sleep(5000);         }     } } 

This is the main form where the thread is initialized:

public partial class FormMain : Form {  ... public FormMain()     {         InitializeComponent(); ...         startSessionCleaner(); ...     }  private void startSessionCleaner()     {         initializeSessionCleanerThread();         sessionCleanerThread.Start();     }  private void initializeSessionCleanerThread()     {         sessionCleaner = new SessionCleaner();         sessionCleanerThread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(sessionCleaner.DoCleanIdleSessions));     }  private void terminateSessionCleanerThread()     {         try         {             sessionCleanerThread.Join(1000);         }         catch(Exception ex)         {             string sDummy = ex.ToString();         }     }  private void FormMain_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)     {         terminateSessionCleanerThread();     } 

Thanks!

Answer 1

The biggest problem I can see is… why would it ever exit? You do a Join, so obviously expect it to terminate, but is is just while(true). I would have a (volatile) bool field somewhere (on the SessionCleaner) that gets set/cleared and used in the while – for example:

volatile bool keepRunning = true; 

or similar (set it to false before calling Join to exit).

I also don’t see much point in keeping the reference to sessionCleanerThread (just initialize and start it in one method), and the exception swallowing is probably a bad idea.