Creating a background timer to run asynchronously

asynchronous, c#, timer, winforms

Solution

    // Create a 30 min timer 
    timer = new System.Timers.Timer(1800000);

    // Hook up the Elapsed event for the timer.
    timer.Elapsed += OnTimedEvent;

    timer.Enabled = true;


...

private static void OnTimedEvent(object source, ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
    // do stuff
}

with the usual caveats of: timer won't be hugely accurate and might need to `GC.KeepAlive(timer)`

See also: Why does a System.Timers.Timer survive GC but not System.Threading.Timer?

Problem

I'm really struggling with this. I'm creating a `winforms` application in visual studio and need a background timer that ticks once every half hour - the purpose of this is to pull down updates from a server. I have tried a couple of different approaches but they have failed, either due to poor tutorial/examples, or to my own shortcomings in `C#`. I think it would be a waste of time to show you what I have tried so far as it seems what I tried was pretty far off the mark. Does anyone know of a clear and simple way of implementing an asynchronous background timer that is easily understandable by a `C#` newbie?

Original source

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