Question

I have a winform application that runs in background with a BackgroundWorker that has an infinite loop that execute something every hour. My UI Form class is something like this:

public partial class frmAutoScript : Form
{
    private volatile bool _isDownloading = false;
    private bool IsDownloading { get { return this._isDownloading; } set { this._isDownloading = value; } }

    public frmAutoScript()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        this.RunAutoSynchronization();
    }

    private void RunAutoSynchronization()
    {
        bool isDownloading = this.IsDownloading;

        BackgroundWorker bgwDownloader = new BackgroundWorker();
        bgwDownloader.WorkerReportsProgress = true;
        bgwDownloader.ProgressChanged += (sndr, evnt) =>
        {
            if (evnt.ProgressPercentage == 2)
                isDownloading = this.IsDownloading;
            else
            {
                this.IsDownloading = evnt.ProgressPercentage == 1;
                isDownloading = this.IsDownloading;
            }
        };
        bgwDownloader.DoWork += (sndr, evnt) =>
            {
                while (true)
                {
                    if (DateTime.Now.Hour == 16 &&
                        DateTime.Now.Minute == 0)
                    {
                        try
                        {
                            bgwDownloader.ReportProgress(2);
                            if (!isDownloading)
                            {
                                bgwDownloader.ReportProgress(1);
                                new Downloader().Download();
                            }
                            bgwDownloader.ReportProgress(0);
                        }
                        catch { }
                    }

                    System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(60000);
                }
            };
        bgwDownloader.RunWorkerAsync();
    }
}

And in that frmAutoScript, I also have a button named btnDownload that when clicked, it will download and change the value of the volatile varialbe _isDownloading. The event of the button is something like this:

private void btnDownload_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (IsDownloading)
        MessageBox.Show("A download is currently ongoing. Please wait for the download to finish.",
            "Force Download", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation);
    else
    {
        this.IsDownloading = true;
        BackgroundWorker bgwDownloader = new BackgroundWorker();
        bgwDownloader.DoWork += (sndr, evnt) =>
        {
            try
            {
                new Downloader().Download();
            }
            catch(Exception ex)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("An error occur during download. Please contact your system administrator.\n Exception: " +
                    ex.GetType().ToString() + "\nError Message:\n" + ex.Message + " Stack Trace:\n" + ex.StackTrace, "Download Error!", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
            }
        };
        bgwDownloader.RunWorkerCompleted += (sndr, evnt) =>
        {
            this.IsDownloading = false;
        };
        bgwDownloader.RunWorkerAsync();
    }
}

But when I click the button btnDownload and the _isDownloading is set to true, and when the system time hit the 4:00 PM, the new Downloader().Download(); is executed again eventhough the _isDownloading is set to true. Why was it like this?

My code is in C#, framework 4, project is in winforms, build in Visual Studio 2010 Pro.

Answer 1

Your code is not testing against the volatile field – it is testing against isDownloading, which looks like a “local”, but (because it is captured) is in fact a regular (non-volatile) field. So: either use some kind of memory barrier, or force that to be a volatile read. Or more simply: get rid of isDownloading completely, and check against the property.

Incidentally, the cache-defeating properties of volatile are not the intent of the keyword, but rather: a consequence. It’ll work, but personally I’d suggest writing the code to work by intent rather than by consequence, perhaps using either a simple lock or something like Interlocked.