AbortCheck Event in Chilkat .NET Components

The AbortCheck event is standard in Chilkat .NET classes that involve communications over sockets (FTP, POP3, SMTP, IMAP, HTTP, etc.) or time-consuming operations such as zipping/unzipping large files. There are three steps to using AbortCheck:

1. Enable event callbacks by setting the EnableEvents property = true.

Chilkat.MailMan mailman = new Chilkat.MailMan();
mailman.EnableEvents = true;

2. Set the HeartbeatMs property. The HeartbeatMs property is the number of milliseconds between each AbortCheck callback. The default value is 0 to indicate that no AbortCheck events will be fired. You must set the HeartbeatMs property to a non-zero value to receive AbortCheck events. For example, a value of 100 sends 10 events per second.

mailman.HeartbeatMs = 100;

3. Add a handler for OnAbortCheck. To do this, (in C#) begin typing “mailman.OnAbortCheck +=” and a tooltip will appear, as shown below:

Press the TAB character to complete the statement. Press the TAB character again to auto-generate the event handler code, which now looks like this:

        private void AbortTest()
        {
            Chilkat.MailMan mailman = new Chilkat.MailMan();
            mailman.EnableEvents = true;

            mailman.HeartbeatMs = 100;
            mailman.OnAbortCheck += new Chilkat.MailMan.AbortCheckEventHandler(mailman_OnAbortCheck);
        }

        void mailman_OnAbortCheck(object sender, Chilkat.AbortCheckEventArgs args)
        {
            throw new Exception("The method or operation is not implemented.");
        }

The mailman_OnAbortCheck event handler is now called once every 100 milliseconds during any POP3 or SMTP operation that involves communication with the server. You may abort by setting args.Abort = true. For example:

        void mailman_OnAbortCheck(object sender, Chilkat.AbortCheckEventArgs args)
        {
            bool bAbort = false;
            // Add code here to determine whether the in-progress operation should be aborted.
            // If so, set args.Abort = true
            if (bAbort) args.Abort = true;
        }

Important: Many Chilkat methods allow for percent-done progress monitoring. Percent-done event callbacks also provide the ability to abort an operation. Therefore, AbortCheck events are suppressed when the frequency of percent-done callbacks is greater than the HeartbeatMs. The reason for this is to prevent too many callbacks from disrupting performance. If you used both percent-done and AbortCheck events, you should also code for aborting from the percent-done event.

Creating a VB.NET Event Handler for AbortCheck

In VB.NET, the object must not be declared as a local variable. It must be declared “WithEvents”, typically as a member of the Form. Then select the data member (as shown below) to get a list of events (in the “Declarations” combo-box to the right).

Finally, select the event from the combo box (you should see the various events listed) and let Visual Studio generate your event handler code…