Update UI thread from portable class library - windows-phone-8

Question

I have an MVVM Cross application running on Windows Phone 8 which I recently ported across to using Portable Class Libraries.
The view models are within the portable class library and one of them exposes a property which enables and disables a PerformanceProgressBar from the Silverlight for WP toolkit through data binding.
When the user presses a button a RelayCommand kicks off a background process which sets the property to true which should enable the progress bar and does the background processing.
Before I ported it to a PCL I was able to invoke the change from the UI thread to ensure the progress bar got enabled, but the Dispatcher object isn't available in a PCL. How can I work around this?
Thanks
Dan

Answer 1

All the MvvmCross platforms require that UI-actions get marshalled back on to the UI Thread/Apartment - but each platform does this differently....
To work around this, MvvmCross provides a cross-platform way to do this - using an IMvxViewDispatcherProvider injected object.
For example, on WindowsPhone IMvxViewDispatcherProvider is provided ultimately by MvxMainThreadDispatcher in https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross/blob/vnext/Cirrious/Cirrious.MvvmCross.WindowsPhone/Views/MvxMainThreadDispatcher.cs
This implements the InvokeOnMainThread using:
private bool InvokeOrBeginInvoke(Action action)
{
if (_uiDispatcher.CheckAccess())
action();
else
_uiDispatcher.BeginInvoke(action);
return true;
}
For code in ViewModels:
your ViewModel inherits from MvxViewModel
the MvxViewModel inherits from an MvxApplicationObject
the MvxApplicationObject inherits from an MvxNotifyPropertyChanged
the MvxNotifyPropertyChanged object inherits from an MvxMainThreadDispatchingObject
MvxMainThreadDispatchingObject is https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross/blob/vnext/Cirrious/Cirrious.MvvmCross/ViewModels/MvxMainThreadDispatchingObject.cs
public abstract class MvxMainThreadDispatchingObject
: IMvxServiceConsumer<IMvxViewDispatcherProvider>
{
protected IMvxViewDispatcher ViewDispatcher
{
get { return this.GetService().Dispatcher; }
}
protected void InvokeOnMainThread(Action action)
{
if (ViewDispatcher != null)
ViewDispatcher.RequestMainThreadAction(action);
}
}
So... your ViewModel can just call InvokeOnMainThread(() => DoStuff());
One further point to note is that MvvmCross automatically does UI thread conversions for property updates which are signalled in a MvxViewModel (or indeed in any MvxNotifyPropertyChanged object) through the RaisePropertyChanged() methods - see:
protected void RaisePropertyChanged(string whichProperty)
{
// check for subscription before going multithreaded
if (PropertyChanged == null)
return;
InvokeOnMainThread(
() =>
{
var handler = PropertyChanged;
if (handler != null)
handler(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(whichProperty));
});
}
in https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross/blob/vnext/Cirrious/Cirrious.MvvmCross/ViewModels/MvxNotifyPropertyChanged.cs
This automatic marshalling of RaisePropertyChanged() calls works well for most situations, but can be a bit inefficient if you Raise a lot of changed properties from a background thread - it can lead to a lot of thread context switching. It's not something you need to be aware of in most of your code - but if you ever do find it is a problem, then it can help to change code like:
MyProperty1 = newValue1;
MyProperty2 = newValue2;
// ...
MyProperty10 = newValue10;
to:
InvokeOnMainThread(() => {
MyProperty1 = newValue1;
MyProperty2 = newValue2;
// ...
MyProperty10 = newValue10;
});
If you ever use ObservableCollection, then please note that MvvmCross does not do any thread marshalling for the INotifyPropertyChanged or INotifyCollectionChanged events fired by these classes - so it's up to you as a developer to marshall these changes.
The reason: ObservableCollection exists in the MS and Mono code bases - so there is no easy way that MvvmCross can change these existing implementations.

Answer 2

If you don't have access to the Dispatcher, you can just pass a delegate of the BeginInvoke method to your class:
public class YourViewModel
{
public YourViewModel(Action<Action> beginInvoke)
{
this.BeginInvoke = beginInvoke;
}
protected Action<Action> BeginInvoke { get; private set; }
private void SomeMethod()
{
this.BeginInvoke(() => DoSomething());
}
}
Then to instanciate it (from a class that has access to the dispatcher):
var dispatcherDelegate = action => Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(action);
var viewModel = new YourViewModel(dispatcherDelegate);
Or you can also create a wrapper around your dispatcher.
First, define a IDispatcher interface in your portable class library:
public interface IDispatcher
{
void BeginInvoke(Action action);
}
Then, in the project who has access to the dispatcher, implement the interface:
public class DispatcherWrapper : IDispatcher
{
public DispatcherWrapper(Dispatcher dispatcher)
{
this.Dispatcher = dispatcher;
}
protected Dispatcher Dispatcher { get; private set; }
public void BeginInvoke(Action action)
{
this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(action);
}
}
Then you can just pass this object as a IDispatcher instance to your portable class library.

Answer 3

Another option that could be easier is to store a reference to SynchronizationContext.Current in your class's constructor. Then, later on, you can use _context.Post(() => ...) to invoke on the context -- which is the UI thread in WPF/WinRT/SL.
class MyViewModel
{
private readonly SynchronizationContext _context;
public MyViewModel()
{
_context = SynchronizationContext.Current.
}
private void MyCallbackOnAnotherThread()
{
_context.Post(() => UpdateTheUi());
}
}