Question

So the problem is I have a ThreadManager class which use queue to hold the Task objects; the ThreadManager can start the Task by invoking the Task‘s Start() method from which will generate a thread to run some algorithm (the actual “task”). Now what I want to achieve is to let the ThreadManager to monitor the status of the task thread (generated from the Start() method of the Task object).

For this to work, I think I need to create a thread to do the monitoring in the ThreadManager, and I need a way to let the task thread to fire events to notify the monitor thread that I am finished or I encountered some error, so the monitor can handle these event accordingly.

Gurus, please advise me if my idea is applicable? And if it is, how to achieve this workflow? Many thanks!

Answer 1

I would just use Task.ContinueWith to schedule a continuation for each of the tasks and then change the status depending on the result of the task in your continuation. You know that the task has been started (because you called Start()) – you just need to know when the task completes. If it fails, is cancelled, or finishes, you can observe that in the continuation task and then you can update your status. The continuation task is an Action<Task>, which receives the completed task. You can call task.Status to get the status of that completed task.

Then you don’t need to have a separate thread/task to monitor the status periodically.