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Forum Discussion
xtremebytes
7 years agoExplorer | Level 3
Cancelling ListFolderLongpollAsync
Hi,
I have a Dropbox longpoll running as a task, implemented in C# (Xamarin Forms) as the following.
async Task DropboxLongpoll (string cursor, CancellationToken token) { var longpollClient = this.GetClient (); int backoff = 0; System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine ("Running background longpoll task."); while (!token.IsCancellationRequested) { var longpollResults = await longpollClient.Files.ListFolderLongpollAsync (cursor); //default timeout is 30 seconds System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine ("Changes: " + longpollResults.Changes + " Backoff: " + longpollResults.Backoff.GetValueOrDefault ()); if (longpollResults.Changes) { var folderResult = await longpollClient.Files.ListFolderContinueAsync (cursor); cursor = folderResult.Cursor; DropboxLongpollReportChanges (folderResult); } //backoff if present if (longpollResults.Backoff != null) { backoff = (int)longpollResults.Backoff.GetValueOrDefault (); } System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine ("Backing off longpoll for " + backoff + " seconds"); await Task.Delay (backoff * 1000); //milliseconds delay } System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine ("Cancelling task"); longpollClient.Dispose (); token.ThrowIfCancellationRequested (); System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine ("Task finished"); }
While I can nicely cancel (i.e., the while loop stops) this task by calling Cancel on the CancellationTokenSource from which I got the token, the Dropbox longpoll task seems to keep running, i.e., listening for changes. I can ignore the changes it reports by modifying this code to the following.
async Task DropboxLongpoll (string cursor, CancellationToken token) { var longpollClient = this.GetClient (); int backoff = 0; System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine ("Running background longpoll task."); while (!token.IsCancellationRequested) { var longpollResults = await longpollClient.Files.ListFolderLongpollAsync (cursor); //default timeout is 30 seconds if (!token.IsCancellationRequested) { //check if the cancellation is still not requested System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine ("Changes: " + longpollResults.Changes + " Backoff: " + longpollResults.Backoff.GetValueOrDefault ()); if (longpollResults.Changes) { var folderResult = await longpollClient.Files.ListFolderContinueAsync (cursor); cursor = folderResult.Cursor; DropboxLongpollReportChanges (folderResult); } //backoff if present if (longpollResults.Backoff != null) { backoff = (int)longpollResults.Backoff.GetValueOrDefault (); } System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine ("Backing off longpoll for " + backoff + " seconds"); await Task.Delay (backoff * 1000); //milliseconds delay } else { System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine ("Cancelling task"); longpollClient.Dispose (); token.ThrowIfCancellationRequested (); } } System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine ("Task finished"); }
But, this is just ignoring the detected changes. I believe that the long poll will keep running as a background thread. Will the Dropbox longpoll async task actually cancel? Is there a way to pass the token to the ListFolderLongpollAsync so that it actually cancel when cancellation is requested?
- It's not possible to cancel an ongoing request instantly unfortunately, but the long poll request will eventually close or time out on its own. I'll pass this along as a feature request for actual CancellationToken support in the SDK though.
- xtremebytesExplorer | Level 3System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine ("Task finished"); does not actually get invoked in the second code snippet.
- xtremebytesExplorer | Level 3
The line token.ThrowIfCancellationRequested (); was not necessary. I realised there is a different reason why the longpoll seemed to be called twice. I had a threading issue with the DropboxLongpollReportChanges() method. Still, it would be nice to know if the longpoll task is actually getting cancelled so that it doesn't waste resources.
- Greg-DBDropbox StaffIt's not possible to cancel an ongoing request instantly unfortunately, but the long poll request will eventually close or time out on its own. I'll pass this along as a feature request for actual CancellationToken support in the SDK though.
- xtremebytesExplorer | Level 3Thanks a lot!
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