Question

I’m not really to up on Async controller, I’m currently reading what I can but I thought I’d try and save myself some time as I’m on a rather tight deadline.

I’m working on a project that allows users to upload video clips but I then want to convert them to different formats for playback on different devices. I was thinking of doing this straight after the upload has happened but the down side is the user will be waiting for that to finish before they can navigate away.

So to my question, would using a async controller and action allow the conversion process to happen with out the user having to wait at the upload page?

Apologies if this is a stupid question, like I said I’ve only just started reading about async controllers

Thanks

Answer 1

No. AsyncController frees up the thread executing the controller to do other things when there is low CPU usage (for example heavy I/O). A result will not be returned to the client until the action method returns.

You are better off starting your conversion in a separate thread, if you want to return a page quickly. We use this approach when sending emails, so that the user does not have to wait for the email to be sent before we return a view to them.

Here is how we send emails.

// this can go in an action method, or you can DI this code as a service
var sender = new SmtpEmailSender(message);
var thread = new Thread(sender.Send);
thread.Start();
...
return View(model);

// this is the code run by the new thread 
// (EmailMessage is a custom type in our app)
public class SmtpEmailSender
{
    public SmtpEmailSender(EmailMessage emailMessage) 
    { 
        // arg to instance field
    }

    public void Send() 
    { 
        // construct System.Net mail and send over SMTP
    }
}