Invoke and BeginInvoke of control and delegates

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shabbir ( Go4Expert Founder )

Shabbir is a developer in the field of Applications, web as well as database designing and is devoted to the optimization and usability of the code. He maintains Programming forum and is a C++ addict.

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Delegate.Invoke

Delegate.Invoke is used to execute a delegate on the current thread. A delegate is just a reference to a function or method, and Delegate.Invoke is the mechanism to call this function or method (similar to a normal function call).

Delegate.BeginInvoke

Delegate.BeginInvoke is used to execute a delegate asynchronously, that is, on a separate thread. That means that you can start an operation which won't block your current thread, it will be executed on it's own thread. Delegate.BeginInvoke the operation will be performed "in the background", that is, on a separate thread. Note that you need to call EndInvoke at some time after BeginInvoke to avoid resource leaks.

As its a seperate thread you must not update any property or call any method of a Windows Forms user that potentially update the UI. If you want to update a progress bar, fill a list, or do somehting similar while the operation is performed, you have to use a different mechanism: Control.Invoke or Control.BeginInvoke.

Control.Invoke

Control.Invoke is used to execute a delegate on the UI thread of that control. If you have a delegate which updates the user interface, you can call Control.Invoke from your other thread to execute the update operation on the UI thread.

Control.BeginInvoke

Control.BeginInvoke does the same, but in an asynchronous way. This means that, while Control.Invoke waits until the UI thread has finished executing the delegate, Control.BeginInvoke returns immediately.

Notes to remember:

Control.Invoke, Control.BeginInvoke, and Control.InvokeRequired are exceptions and can use these from other threads than the UI thread.

[varunjoshi]

If Control.BeginInvoke is asynchronus then does it executes on separate thread?
If yes then in that case we should get some exception if we try to access some UI element.