Question

new to WPF and c# hobbyist…

For some reason, I can’t get my loadingAnimation (or any other) function to run immediately after a button press and before a SOAP call.

My xaml:

    <Grid>
    <TextBox Height="220" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="12,79,0,0" Name="txtResults" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="337" />
    <TextBox Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="12,29,0,0" Name="txtServiceTag" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="120" />
    <CheckBox Content="This computer's service tag" Height="16" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="151,32,0,0" Name="chkThisST" VerticalAlignment="Top" Checked="chkThisST_Checked" Unchecked="chkThisST_Unchecked"/>
    <Button Content="Get Info" Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="12,324,0,0" Name="btnGetInfo" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="75" Click="btnGetInfo_Click" />
    <my:LoadingAnimation HorizontalAlignment="Center" Margin="128,154,419,127" VerticalAlignment="Center" Name="loadingAnimation" Visibility="Hidden" />
    </Grid>

My .cs:

    private void btnGetInfo_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        txtResults.Text = "Retrieving information..."; 
        ShowHideLoading();
        SoapCall();
        ShowHideLoading();
    }

My SoapCall() seems to be running before txtResults.Text has time to populate. SoapCall() takes about 5 seconds to return a message. I’ve messed around with the order of objects in , but to no avail.

Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

The reason is that the SoapCall() is blocking the UI thread. In other words, until it is finished – no UI operations will be called.

You can solve this by putting the SoapCall() inside a BackgroundWorker.
Then, the ShowHideLoading can be put inside the RunWorkerCompleted event.

Here is an example on how to use the BackgroundWorker