Question

This is a fictional example but I was wandering what happens if the InitialiseTimer function gets called twice. Does the timer elapsed function get triggered twice. Will this change if the functions are made static?

    private static void InitialiseTimer()
    {
            TheTimer = new System.Timers.Timer();
            TheTimer.Interval = 400;
            TheTimer.Elapsed += new ElapsedEventHandler(TheTimer_Elapsed);
            TheTimer.AutoReset = false;
    }   

    public void TheTimer_Elapsed(object sender, ElapsedEventArgs e)
    {
        //Do stuff in here
    }

I was going to use below to prevent this

Has an event handler already been added?

Thanks,
Richard

Answer 1

I think the following demonstrates the scenario and does indeed fire twice, also propose a simple change (commented code) to the Init method that should fix the behavior. (Not thread safe btw, additional locks would be required)

[TestClass]
public class UnitTest1
{
    [TestMethod]
    public void TestMethod1()
    {
        var counter = 0;
        var ts = new ThreadStart(() =>
            {

                Foo.Fired += (o, e) =>
                    {
                        counter++;
                    };
                Foo.InitialiseTimer();
                Foo.InitialiseTimer();
            });
        var t = new Thread(ts);
        t.Start();

        Thread.Sleep(30);
        Assert.AreEqual(1, counter);
    }
}

public class Foo
{
    private static System.Timers.Timer TheTimer = null;

    public static event EventHandler Fired;

    public static void InitialiseTimer()
    {
        //if (TheTimer != null)
        //{
        //    TheTimer.Stop();
        //    TheTimer = null;
        //}
        TheTimer = new System.Timers.Timer();
        TheTimer.Interval = 10;
        TheTimer.Elapsed += new ElapsedEventHandler(TheTimer_Elapsed);
        TheTimer.AutoReset = false;
        TheTimer.Start();
    }

    public static void TheTimer_Elapsed(object sender, ElapsedEventArgs e)
    {
        //Do stuff in here
        if (Fired != null)
        {
            Fired(null, null);
        }
    }
}