Keeping the UI responsive while parsing a very large logfile

Posted by Carlos on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Carlos
Published on 2010-05-25T16:46:56Z Indexed on 2010/05/25 16:51 UTC
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I'm writing an app that parses a very large logfile, so that the user can see the contents in a treeview format. I've used a BackGroundWorker to read the file, and as it parses each message, I use a BeginInvoke to get the GUI thread to add a node to my treeview. Unfortunately, there's two issues:

  • The treeview is unresponsive to clicks or scrolls while the file is being parsed. I would like users to be able to examine (ie expand) nodes while the file is parsing, so that they don't have to wait for the whole file to finish parsing.
  • The treeview flickers each time a new node is added.

Here's the code inside the form:

private void btnChangeDir_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    OpenFileDialog browser = new OpenFileDialog();

    if (browser.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)
    {
        tbSearchDir.Text = browser.FileName;
        BackgroundWorker bgw = new BackgroundWorker();
        bgw.DoWork += (ob, evArgs) => ParseFile(tbSearchDir.Text);
        bgw.RunWorkerAsync();
    }
}

private void ParseFile(string inputfile)
{
    FileStream logFileStream = new FileStream(inputfile, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.ReadWrite);
    StreamReader LogsFile = new StreamReader(logFileStream);

    while (!LogsFile.EndOfStream)
    {
        string Msgtxt = LogsFile.ReadLine();
        Message msg = new Message(Msgtxt.Substring(26)); //Reads the text into a class with appropriate members
        AddTreeViewNode(msg);
    }
}

private void AddTreeViewNode(Message msg)
{
    TreeNode newNode = new TreeNode(msg.SeqNum);

    BeginInvoke(new Action(() =>
                               {
                                   treeView1.BeginUpdate();
                                   treeView1.Nodes.Add(newNode);
                                   treeView1.EndUpdate();
                                   Refresh();
                               }
                    )); 
}

What needs to be changed?

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