How to Properly Dispose Resources in a WinForms Application with BackgroundWorker?
This might be a silly question, but I've looked through the documentation and I'm still confused about Developing a WinForms application for a hackathon, I needed to implement a feature that periodically fetches data from an API and displays it in a ListBox... The challenge arose when I added a `BackgroundWorker` to manage this asynchronous operation. While trying to ensure the UI remains responsive, I’m not sure how to properly dispose of the resources when the operation completes or if the user cancels it. Here’s how I’ve set up the `BackgroundWorker`: ```csharp private BackgroundWorker _worker; public MainForm() { InitializeComponent(); _worker = new BackgroundWorker(); _worker.WorkerReportsProgress = true; _worker.WorkerSupportsCancellation = true; _worker.DoWork += Worker_DoWork; _worker.RunWorkerCompleted += Worker_RunWorkerCompleted; } private void Worker_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e) { while (!_worker.CancellationPending) { // Simulate a long-running operation Thread.Sleep(1000); // Fetch data from API var data = FetchDataFromApi(); _worker.ReportProgress(0, data); } } private void Worker_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e) { if (e.Error != null) { MessageBox.Show("An error occurred: " + e.Error.Message); } else { var result = (List<string>)e.Result; listBox1.DataSource = result; } } ``` I’ve noticed that the resources used during `FetchDataFromApi()` aren’t being released properly, which leads to memory issues during the operation. I initially thought about implementing `IDisposable` in my `MainForm`, but I'm not sure how that fits into the async nature of the `BackgroundWorker`. Additionally, I tried calling `Dispose()` on the `BackgroundWorker` in the `FormClosing` event, but it seems to have no effect on the resources allocated during the API calls. Would it be best to call `_worker.CancelAsync()` before disposing or is there a more effective way to ensure everything is cleaned up? Any guidance on resource management in this context would be greatly appreciated, especially considering the time constraints of the hackathon environment. Thanks in advance for your help! Am I missing something obvious? For context: I'm using C# on Windows.