How to call TriggerBatch automagically after a timeout if the number of queued items is less than the BatchSize?
c#, parallel-processing, task-parallel-library, tpl-dataflow
Solution
Yes, you can accomplish this rather elegantly by chaining together blocks. In this case you want to setup a TransformBlock which you link "before" the BatchBlock. That would look something like this:
Timer triggerBatchTimer = new Timer(() => yourBatchBlock.TriggerBatch());
TransformBlock<T, T> timeoutTransformBlock = new TransformBlock<T, T>((value) =>
{
triggerBatchTimer.Change(5000, Timeout.Infinite);
return value;
});
timeoutTransformBlock.LinkTo(yourBatchBlock);
yourBufferBlock.LinkTo(timeoutTransformBlock);
Problem
Using Dataflow CTP (in the TPL) Is there a way to call `BatchBlock.TriggerBatch` automatically if the number of currently queued or postponed items is less than the `BatchSize`, after a timeout? And better: this timeout should be reset to 0 each time the block receives a new item.