Skip to main content

Periodically run a method without freezing UI.

 This was one of the requirements to periodically check if the internet connection for a system is on / off. Based on the Internet Connectivity Status, it will do certain actions. How do I check the Internet Connection Status periodically and asynchronously? 

To solve this programming puzzle (in C#.NET), I have used System.Timers.Timer class. There was one more class available in the .NET framework, that was, System.Threading.Timer. I have chosen System.Timers.Timer class, because it is thread-safe but System.Threading.Timer class isn't out of the box.

Step 1: Created an elapsed event handler for the timer class:

<Code>

// Create a timer with 10 seconds interval in the init method of the form application;
m_Timer = new System.Timers.Timer(10 * 1000);
/* It's going to fire the below-highlighted method every 10 seconds*/
m_Timer.Elapsed += checkInternetConnectionState; 
m_Timer.Enabled = true;

</Code>

Step 2: Created checkInternetConnectionState async method definition:

<Code>

private async void checkInternetConnectionState(Object? source, ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
    // The aqua-highlighted one actually going to do the task
    List<string>? connectDetails = await GetConnectionDetailsAsync(); 
}

</Code>

Step 3: Defined GetConnectionDetailsAsync  as below:

<Code>

private Task<List<string>?> GetConnectionDetailsAsync()
        {
            List<string>? connectionDetails = null;
            return Task.Run(() => {
                if ((Microsoft.WindowsAPICodePack.Net.
                        NetworkListManager.IsConnectedToInternet))
                {
                    NetworkCollection netCollection = 
                        NetworkListManager.
                        GetNetworks(NetworkConnectivityLevels.Connected);
                    connectionDetails = new List<string>();
                    foreach (Network net in netCollection)
                    {
                        if (net.IsConnected)
                        {
                            connectionDetails.Add(net.Name);
                            connectionDetails.Add(net.Category.ToString());
                            connectionDetails.Add(net.DomainType.ToString());
                            connectionDetails.Add(net.ConnectedTime.ToString());
                        }
                    }
                }
                return connectionDetails;
            });
        }

</Code>

I have used WindowsAPICodePack to get internet connectivity status and details. If we stitch these three steps together we can achieve the desired goal. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reversing char array without splitting the array to tokens

 I was reading about strdup, a C++ function and suddenly an idea came to my mind if this can be leveraged to aid in reversing a character array without splitting the array into words and reconstructing it again by placing spaces and removing trailing spaces. Again, I wanted an array to be passed as a function argument and an array size to be passed implicitly with the array to the function. Assumed, a well-formed char array has been passed into the function. No malformed array checking is done inside the function. So, the function signature and definition are like below: Below is the call from the client code to reverse the array without splitting tokens and reconstructing it. Finally, copy the reversed array to the destination.  For GNU C++, we should use strdup instead _strdup . On run, we get the following output: Demo code
Post a Comment
Read more

XOR (Exclusive OR) for branchless coding

The following example shows the array reversing using the  XOR operator . No need to take any additional variable to reverse the array.   int main(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[]) { char str[] = "I AM STUDENT"; int length = strlen(str); for(int i = 0; i < ((length/2)); i++) { str[i] ^= str[length - (1+i)]; str[length - (1+i)] ^= str[i]; str[i] ^= str[length - (1+i)]; } cout << str << endl; return 0; } The above example is one of the uses of XOR but XOR comes in handy when we can do branchless coding  methods like butterfly switch etc. Sometimes this is very effective in speeding up the execution.  Let's see one of the uses of XOR in branchless coding. I am taking a simple example of Y = | X |.  Yes, I am generating abs of a supplied number. So, my function signature/definition in C++ looks like below: int absoluteBranch( int x) {     if (x < 0 ) {         return -x;     }     else {         retur
1 comment
Read more

Power of Two

  I n this post will be discussing how to calculate if a number is a power of two or not. As an example, 8 is a power of two but the number 10 is not. There are many ways we can solve this. First , we will take an approach which is simple and iterative. In this case, we will calculate the power of two one by one and check with the supplied number. The below code illustrates it. bool isPowerofTwo(unsigned num) { auto y = 1; while (0 != y) { if (num == y) return true; if (num < y) return false; y <<= 1; } return false; } Second , assuming, the number is a 32-bit number, this is also an iterative solution. In this scenario, iterating all bits and counting the set bits. Any number which is a power of 2 will have only one bit set and the rest will be zeros. As an example, 8 in binary representation is 1000. Using this observation, we can implement an iterative solution. bool isPowerofTwo(unsigned num) { auto one_count = 0; for (auto index = 0; index < 32;
Post a Comment
Read more