Using events inside Status

[ThomasArdal]

I'm wondering if it is possible to use events inside the Status feature. Let's say we have the example from the documentation:

AnsiConsole.Status()
    .Start("Thinking...", ctx => 
    {
        // Simulate some work
        AnsiConsole.MarkupLine("Doing some work...");
    });

And I want to subscribe to an event inside the callback:

var someObjectContainingEvents = ...
AnsiConsole.Status()
    .Start("Thinking...", ctx => 
    {
        // Simulate some work
        AnsiConsole.MarkupLine("Doing some work...");

        someObjectContainingEvent.MyEvent += (sender, e) =>
        {
            ctx.MarkupLine("Doing some more work...");
        }
    });

This won't work because the Start method is returned which will remove the status widget from the console.

[phil-scott-78]

Certainly supported. But you'll need to do all your work in the action passed into the start method. If you move the someObjectContainingEvents in there things should wire up.

[ThomasArdal]

Would make it possible to do something like this:

var status = AnsiConsole.Status();
status.Start("Thinking...", ctx =>
{
    // Simulate some work
    AnsiConsole.MarkupLine("Doing some work...");
    Thread.Sleep(1000);

    // Update the status and spinner
    ctx.Status("Thinking some more");
    ctx.Spinner(Spinner.Known.Star);
    ctx.SpinnerStyle(Style.Parse("green"));

    // Simulate some work
    AnsiConsole.MarkupLine("Doing some more work...");
    Thread.Sleep(2000);

    objectWithEvent.OnSomething += (sender, e) =>
    {
        ctx.Status("Thinking about the event");
    };
});
objectWithEvent.OnShutdown += (sender, e) =>
{
    status.Stop();
};

[phil-scott-78]

Right now, Status (and by association ProgressBar) are designed are to be top-level UI items. They'll assume all work is being done within that action. The more code in that action the better.

BUT. I think you could do this. You'd need to signal into the action you are complete somehow. Here's an example using a FileSystemWatcher created outside of the Status action that will signal it is done via a delete operation that's defined outside of the action. In the action we subscribe (should unsubscribe too IRL) that uses a CancellationTokenSource as the signal.

using var fsw = new FileSystemWatcher("r:\\temp") {EnableRaisingEvents = true};
var cts = new CancellationTokenSource();
fsw.Deleted += (_, _) => cts.Cancel();

AnsiConsole.Status()
    .Start("Thinking...", ctx =>
    {
        fsw.Created += (sender, eventArgs) => AnsiConsole.MarkupLine($"[green]{eventArgs.Name}[/] created");

        // Simulate some work
        AnsiConsole.MarkupLine("Doing some work...");

        // Update the status and spinner
        ctx.Status("Thinking some more");
        ctx.Spinner(Spinner.Known.Star);
        ctx.SpinnerStyle(Style.Parse("green"));
        AnsiConsole.MarkupLine("Doing some more work...");
        SpinWait.SpinUntil(() => cts.IsCancellationRequested);
    });

[ThomasArdal]

Yay, that worked. Thank you so much.

[phil-scott-78]

Love that gif. No joke, I was thinking just last night it would be fun to spice up the build output but I had no idea where to start. Very cool!

[ThomasArdal]

Yeah, I had the same thought today. Was looking at the result from another build and the output confused more than it helped. So, I decided to play with a custom logger and Spectre.Console. Just for fun, but maybe something cool will come out of it.