Named Pipes - Asynchronous Peeking

Question

I need to find a way to be notified when a System.IO.Pipe.NamedPipeServerStream opened in asynchronous mode has more data available for reading on it- a WaitHandle would be idea

Answer 1

Ok, so I just ripped this out of my code, hopefully I deleted all the application logic stuff. The idea is that you try a zero-length read with ReadFile and wait on both the lpOverlapped.EventHandle (fired when the read completes) and a WaitHandle set when another thread wants to write to the pipe. If the read is to be interrupted due to a writing thread, use CancelIoEx to cancel the zero-length read.

NativeOverlapped lpOverlapped;
ManualResetEvent DataReadyHandle = new ManualResetEvent(false);
lpOverlapped.InternalHigh = IntPtr.Zero;
lpOverlapped.InternalLow = IntPtr.Zero;
lpOverlapped.OffsetHigh = 0;
lpOverlapped.OffsetLow = 0;
lpOverlapped.EventHandle = DataReadyHandle.SafeWaitHandle.DangerousGetHandle();
IntPtr x = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(1); //for some reason, ReadFile doesnt like passing NULL in as a buffer
bool rval = ReadFile(SerialPipe.SafePipeHandle, x, 0, IntPtr.Zero,
   ref lpOverlapped);
int BreakCause;
if (!rval) //operation is completing asynchronously
{
   if (GetLastError() != 997) //ERROR_IO_PENDING, which is in fact good
      throw new IOException();
   //So, we have a list of conditions we are waiting for
   WaitHandle[] BreakConditions = new WaitHandle[3];
   //We might get some input to read from the serial port...
   BreakConditions[0] = DataReadyHandle;
    //we might get told to yield the lock so that CPU can write...
   BreakConditions[1] = WriteRequiredSignal;
   //or we might get told that this thread has become expendable
   BreakConditions[2] = ThreadKillSignal;
   BreakCause = WaitHandle.WaitAny(BreakConditions, timeout);
}
else //operation completed synchronously; there is data available
{
   BreakCause = 0; //jump into the reading code in the switch below
}
switch (BreakCause)
{
   case 0:
      //serial port input
      byte[] Buffer = new byte[AttemptReadSize];
      int BRead = SerialPipe.Read(Buffer, 0, AttemptReadSize);
      //do something with your bytes.
      break;
   case 1:
      //asked to yield
      //first kill that read operation
      CancelIoEx(SerialPipe.SafePipeHandle, ref lpOverlapped);
      //should hand over the pipe mutex and wait to be told to tkae it back
      System.Threading.Monitor.Exit(SerialPipeLock);
      WriteRequiredSignal.Reset();
      WriteCompleteSignal.WaitOne();
      WriteCompleteSignal.Reset();
      System.Threading.Monitor.Enter(SerialPipeLock);
      break;
   case 2:
      //asked to die
      //we are the ones responsible for cleaning up the pipe
      CancelIoEx(SerialPipe.SafePipeHandle, ref lpOverlapped);
      //finally block will clean up the pipe and the mutex
      return; //quit the thread
}
Marshal.FreeHGlobal(x);