Processing a queue of items asynchronously in C#

Question

I am trying to create a system that processes a queue of work. The system has the following specifications:

1. The system has two components, a work assigner and a wo

Answer 1

I don't know how long your tasks will be running, but it seems that the best thing to do would be to use ThreadPool. Furthermore, I would use, and actually have used, only one central queue - that alone will remove some complexity. I have one Thread that handles the queue and does an action on the item in your case it would be to queue a task.

As for making the queue threadsafe, there is a ConcurrentQueue in System.Collections.Concurrent for that very purpose (msdn, benchmark vs locking queue).

Now, throw in a BlockingCollection (msdn) and you have all you need.

        BlockingCollection sendQueue = new BlockingCollection(new ConcurrentQueue());
        while (true)
        {
            var packet = sendQueue.Take(); //this blocks if there are no items in the queue.
            ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(state =>
            {
               var data = (Packet)state;
               //do whatever you have to do
            }, packet );
        }

and somewhere there is something that sendQueue.Add(packet);

To sum up,

1. One queue for all "workers"
2. One thread that dequeues from the queue and passes it to the ThreadPool.

I think that's it.

ps: if you have to control the amount of threads, use "Smart Thread Pool" as suggested by josh3736