Question

I have a synchronous web service call that returns a message. I need to quickly return a message that basically says that order was received. I then need to spend a couple of minutes processing the order, but cannot block the service call for that long. So how can I return from the web service, and then do some more stuff? I’m guessing I need to fork some other thread or something before I return, but I’m not sure of the best approach.

string ProcessOrder(Order order)
{
  if(order.IsValid)
  {
      return "Great!";
      //Then I need to process the order
  }
}

Answer 1

You can open a new thread and have it do what you need, while you’re main thread returns great.

string ProcessOrder(Order order)
{
  if(order.IsValid)
  {
            //Starts a new thread
            ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(th =>
                {
                    //Process Order here

                });

      return "Great!";
  }
}