Asynchronous Multi-threaded ObservableCollection

Introduction

ObservableCollections are mainly used in WPF to notify bound UI components of any changes. Those notifications usually translate to UI component updates, normally due to binding. UI component changes could only occur in a UI thread. Whenever you have lengthy work to do, you should do those jobs on a worker thread to improve the responsiveness of the UI. But sometimes, UI updates are very lengthy too. In order to decouple the worker thread from the UI thread, I added/modified functions that enable me to process modifications on the ObservableCollection on the UI thread, either synchronously or asynchronously, and called from any thread. All that occurs transparently by calling the appropriate BeginInvoke (async) or Invoke (sync) whenever needed. But be careful: do not rely on any reads from the ObservableCollection from a worker thread if you use any asynchronous added functions.

Background

I found a few things but never exactly what I wanted. This is why I’m writing this article now. I took a look at: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/MTObservableCollection.aspx (Paul Ortiz solution). And also http://powercollections.codeplex.com/. They weren’t what I expected. I also had some concerns about the first link (explained later).

Read more: Codeproject

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