How set timer in worker thread

Question

Hi
In Win32 app/MFC
Is there a way to set a timer like SetTimer() function for a window but for a working thread that not have a window?

Thanks

Answer 1

You an use SetTimer in an MFC worker thread but it must have a message pump even though it doesn't create windows. For example -

#pragma once

// CTimerThread

class CTimerThread : public CWinThread
{
    DECLARE_DYNCREATE(CTimerThread)

protected:
    CTimerThread();           // protected constructor used by dynamic creation
    virtual ~CTimerThread();

public:
    virtual BOOL InitInstance();
    virtual int ExitInstance();
    static VOID CALLBACK TimerProc(HWND hwnd, UINT msg, UINT_PTR uintId, DWORD dwTime);
protected:
    DECLARE_MESSAGE_MAP()
public:
    UINT_PTR m_TimerId;
    DWORD m_Interval;
};

Implementation -

// CTimerThread.cpp : implementation file
//

#include "pch.h"
#include "CTimerThread.h"


// CTimerThread

IMPLEMENT_DYNCREATE(CTimerThread, CWinThread)

VOID CALLBACK CTimerThread::TimerProc(HWND hwnd, UINT msg, UINT_PTR uintId, DWORD dwTime)
{
    TRACE(_T("In %s\n"), _T(__FUNCTION__));
}

CTimerThread::CTimerThread()
{
    m_TimerId = 0;
    m_Interval = 1000;
}

CTimerThread::~CTimerThread()
{
}

BOOL CTimerThread::InitInstance()
{
    // TODO:  perform and per-thread initialization here
    m_TimerId = SetTimer(NULL, 0, m_Interval, CTimerThread::TimerProc);
    return TRUE;
}

int CTimerThread::ExitInstance()
{
    // TODO:  perform any per-thread cleanup here
    ASSERT(KillTimer(NULL, m_TimerId));
    return CWinThread::ExitInstance();
}

BEGIN_MESSAGE_MAP(CTimerThread, CWinThread)
END_MESSAGE_MAP()


// CTimerThread message handlers

Start and stop the thread from an MFC dialog based application -

void CMFCWorkTimerDlg::OnBnClickedStart()
{
    // TODO: Add your control notification handler code here
    m_pTimerThread = AfxBeginThread(RUNTIME_CLASS(CTimerThread));
}


void CMFCWorkTimerDlg::OnBnClickedStop()
{
    // TODO: Add your control notification handler code here
    PostThreadMessage(m_pTimerThread->m_nThreadID, WM_QUIT, 0, 0);
}