Question

I need to write an application that will monitor a specific folder for new files created by a 3rd party software, then copy them to my repository and send them, one by one, to a web service. Once the file sent, it will be deleted from the repo.

I will obviously use the FileSystemWatcher for file monitoring and copy them to my repo.
Then i will Enqueue copied file names to the Queue.

What should i do from here?
How do i manage this Queue and Dequeue when file was sent?
Another question is how to make this thread-safe, since the Queue is being accessed from different theads (FileSystemWatcher)?

What is the best and safest way to implement this?

Thanks for you answers,
SkyFox

Answer 1

In the beginning:

BlockingCollection<string> q = new BlockingCollection<string>();
var bg = new BackgroundWorker();
bg.DoWork += (s,e) => SendFilesToServer();
bg.RunWorkerAsync();

In the file watcher event (file created):

q.Add(fileName);

the ‘worker’:

void SendFilesToServer()
{
    string filename;
    try
    {
        while(true)
        {
            while (q.TryTake(out fileName))
            {
                // Send to the webservice
            }
            while(q.IsEmpty)
                Thread.Sleep(100);
        }
    }
    catch (InvalidOperationException)
    {
    }
}