Question

Is it possible to return the page response to the user, before you’ve finished all your server side work?

Ie, I’ve got a cheap hosting account with No database, but I’d like to log a certain event, by calling a webservice on my other, more expensive hosting account (ie, a very slow logging operation)

I don’t really want the user to have to wait for this slow logging operation to complete before their page is rendered.

Would I need to spin up a new thread, or make an asynchronous call? Or is it possible to return the page, and then continue working happily in the same thread/code?

Using ASP.Net (webforms) C# .Net 2.0 etc.

Answer 1

You would probably need a second thread. An easy option would be to use the ThreadPool, but in a more sophisticated setup a producer/consumer queue would work well.

At the simplest level:

    ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(delegate {
        DoLogging(state details);
    });