Question

There are times in my application, when I need to invoke my timer manually.

I’ve tried the following:

int originalInterval = t.Interval;
t.Interval = 0;
t.Interval = originalInterval;

but it wasn’t consistent.

I’ve created a new timer, inheriting from System.Timers.Timer, and exposed a “Tick” method – but the problem was that the “Elapsed” event then fired synchronously.

When I implemented the “Tick” with a new Thread – the results were, again, not consistent.

Is there a better way to implement it?

Answer 1

I once had the same problem, so I used the AutoResetEvent to know if the Elapsed was invoked successfully:

/// <summary>
/// Tickable timer, allows you to manually raise a 'Tick' (asynchronously, of course)
/// </summary>
public class TickableTimer : System.Timers.Timer
{
    public new event ElapsedEventHandler Elapsed;

    private System.Threading.AutoResetEvent m_autoResetEvent = new System.Threading.AutoResetEvent(true);

    public TickableTimer()
        : this(100)
    {
    }

    public TickableTimer(double interval)
        : base(interval)
    {
        base.Elapsed += new ElapsedEventHandler(TickableTimer_Elapsed);
    }

    public void Tick()
    {
        new System.Threading.Thread(delegate(object sender)
        {
            Dictionary<string, object> args = new Dictionary<string, object>
            {
                {"signalTime", DateTime.Now},
            };
            TickableTimer_Elapsed(this, Mock.Create<ElapsedEventArgs>(args));
        }).Start();
        this.m_autoResetEvent.WaitOne();
    }

    void TickableTimer_Elapsed(object sender, ElapsedEventArgs e)
    {
        m_autoResetEvent.Set();
        if (this.Elapsed != null)
            this.Elapsed(sender, e);
    }
}