C# / Communication between Async networking and GUI

I'm doing async network in C#.NET with the TcpClient and TcpListener classes. I use WinForms for the GUI.

Whenever I receive data from a remote computer, the operation is done on a different underlying thread.

What I need to do is to update the GUI of my application whenever I receive a network response.

// this method is called whenever data is received
// it's async so it runs on a different thread
private void OnRead(IAsyncResult result)
{
    // update the GUI here, which runs on the main thread
    // (a direct modification of the GUI would throw a cross-thread GUI exception)
}

How can I achieve that?

In Winforms you need to use Control.Invoke Method (Delegate) to make sure that control is updated in the UI thread.

Example:

public static void PerformInvoke(Control ctrl, Action action)
{
    if (ctrl.InvokeRequired)
        ctrl.Invoke(action);
    else
        action();
}

Usage:

PerformInvoke(textBox1, () => { textBox1.Text = "test"; });

in GUI write function like this:

 public void f() {

        MethodInvoker method = () => {
            // body your function
        };

        if ( InvokeRequired ) {
            Invoke( method );  // or BeginInvoke(method) if you want to do this asynchrous
        } else {
            method();
        }
    }

if you in other thread call this function it will be calling in GUI thread

I added an extension method to the code suggested by Alex. It gets even better!

// Extension method
public static class GuiHelpers
{
    public static void PerformInvoke(this Control control, Action action)
    {
        if (control.InvokeRequired)
            control.Invoke(action);
        else
            action();
    }
}


// Example of usage
private void EnableControls()
{
    panelMain.PerformInvoke(delegate { panelMain.Enabled = true; });
    linkRegister.PerformInvoke(delegate { linkRegister.Visible = true; });
}