How To Run A Timer On Specific Time Interval

Introduction

This blog demonstrates, how to run a timer on the specific time interval, using System.Threading.Timer class. This will help the developer to execute a task on the certain time interval. This blog starts with the simple declaration of Timer and will execute a method with a console message printing.

Step 1: Create a new console Application with the name “Threading_Timer” and declare the ‘ _timer’ of type System.Threading.Timer and a local variable ‘count’ of type int globally.

Declaration of Timer and a local variable of type int

//Declare a _timer of type System.Threading
private static Timer _timer;

//Local Variable of type int
private static int count = 1;

Step 2: Initialize the ‘_timer’ in Main method and call a callback method ‘callTimerMethode()’ to print some message at the timer execution interval, inside this.

//Initialization of _timer
_timer = new Timer(x => { callTimerMethode(); }, null, Timeout.Infinite, Timeout.Infinite);

Step 3: Define callTimerMethode() as following:

/// <summary>
/// This method will print timer executed time and increase the count with 1.
/// </summary>
private static void callTimerMethode()
{
    Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Timer Executed {0} times.", count));
    count = count + 1;
}

Step 4: Define a method called ‘Setup_Timer()’ to set the timer execution time and change the execution time of the timer on this time interval and call ‘Setup_Timer()’ method in Main method.

/// <summary>
/// This method will set the timer execution time and will change the tick
time of timer.
    /// </summary>
private static void Setup_Timer()
{
    DateTime currentTime = DateTime.Now;
    DateTime timerRunningTime = new DateTime(currentTime.Year, currentTime.Month, currentTime.Day, 2, 0, 0);
    timerRunningTime = timerRunningTime.AddDays(15);
    double tickTime = (double)(timerRunningTime - DateTime.Now).TotalSeconds;
    _timer.Change(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(tickTime), TimeSpan.FromSeconds(tickTime));
}

The method, shown above, will set the timer running time at the interval of every 15 days at 2 AM.

If you want to run the timer after every 2 minutes, just comment these line of code,

//DateTime currentTime = DateTime.Now;
//DateTime timerRunningTime = new DateTime(currentTime.Year, currentTime.Month, currentTime.Day, 2, 0, 0);
//timerRunningTime = timerRunningTime.AddDays(15);

Add the line of code, given below:

DateTime timerRunningTime = DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(2);

Complete Program line of Code

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;

namespace Threading_Timer
{
    public class Program
    {
        //Declare a _timer of type System.Threading
        private static Timer _timer;

        //Local Variable of type int
        private static int count = 1;

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            //Initialization of _timer
            _timer = new Timer(x => { callTimerMethode(); }, null, Timeout.Infinite, Timeout.Infinite);
            Setup_Timer();
            Console.ReadKey();
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// This method will print timer executed time and increase the count
            with 1.
        /// </summary>
        private static void callTimerMethode()
        {
            Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Timer Executed {0}
            times.",count));
            count=count+1;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// This method will set the timer execution time and will change the
            tick time of timer.
        /// </summary>
        private static void Setup_Timer()
        {
            DateTime currentTime = DateTime.Now;
            DateTime timerRunningTime = new DateTime(currentTime.Year,
            currentTime.Month, currentTime.Day, 2, 0, 0);
            timerRunningTime = timerRunningTime.AddDays(15);
            //DateTime timerRunningTime = DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(2);

            double tickTime = (double)(timerRunningTime –
            DateTime.Now).TotalSeconds;

            _timer.Change(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(tickTime),
 TimeSpan.FromSeconds(tickTime));
        }
    }
}

The output looks, as shown in Figure 1:



Summary

In this blog, I discussed, how we can set the execution time of a method, using “System.Threading.Timer” class. I think this will help a developer to execute a specific task at a specified time interval.