Console Application Wait/Busy Spin Animation

If you would like your console application to show a spinning animation (cycle through characters | / - \ in place) to show your application is busy/working then the following class can do that for you.

Simple run the animation using:

SpinAnimation.Start() or SpinAnimation.Start(50) depending on how fast you want your animation to spin.

To stop the animation use:

SpinAnimation.Stop()

Spin animation will deliberately throw an invalid operation when attempting to start it twice but can be checked with the Boolean ISBusy property prior to starting.  Stop can be called twice successively without any exceptions.

Here is the class which is self documented to describe how it works:

/// <summary>

/// Create spinning console busy animation runnning on a background thread

/// </summary>

 

public static class SpinAnimation

{

 

    //spinner background thread

    private static System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker spinner = initialiseBackgroundWorker();

    //starting position of spinner changes to current position on start

    private static int spinnerPosition = 25;

    //pause time in milliseconds between each character in the spin animation

    private static int spinWait = 25;

    //field and property to inform client if spinner is currently running

    private static bool isRunning;

 

    public static bool IsRunning { get { return isRunning; } }

 

    /// <summary>

    /// Worker thread factory

    /// </summary>

    /// <returns>background worker thread</returns>

 

    private static System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker initialiseBackgroundWorker()

    {

 

        System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker obj = new System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker();

        //allow cancellation to be able to stop the spinner

        obj.WorkerSupportsCancellation = true;

        //anonymous method for background thread's DoWork event

        obj.DoWork += delegate

        {

            //set the spinner position to the current console position

            spinnerPosition = Console.CursorLeft;

            //run animation unless a cancellation is pending

            while (!obj.CancellationPending)

            {

                //characters to iterate through during animation

                char[] spinChars = new char[] { '|', '/', '-', '\\' };

                //iterate through animation character array

                foreach (char spinChar in spinChars)

                {

                    //reset the cursor position to the spinner position

                    Console.CursorLeft = spinnerPosition;

                    //write the current character to the console

                    Console.Write(spinChar);

                    //pause for smooth animation - set by the start method

                    System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(spinWait);

                }

            }

        };

        return obj;

    }

 

    /// <summary>

    /// Start the animation

    /// </summary>

    /// <param name="spinWait">wait time between spin steps in milliseconds</param>

    public static void Start(int spinWait)

    {

        //Set the running flag

        isRunning = true;

        //process spinwait value

        SpinAnimation.spinWait = spinWait;

        //start the animation unless already started

        if (!spinner.IsBusy)

            spinner.RunWorkerAsync();

        else throw new InvalidOperationException("Cannot start spinner whilst spinner is already running");

    }

 

    /// <summary>

    /// Overloaded Start method with default wait value

    /// </summary>

    public static void Start() { Start(25); }

    /// <summary>

    /// Stop the spin animation

    /// </summary>

 

    public static void Stop()

    {

        //Stop the animation

        spinner.CancelAsync();

        //wait for cancellation to complete

        while (spinner.IsBusy) System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(100);

        //reset the cursor position

        Console.CursorLeft = spinnerPosition;

        //set the running flag

        isRunning = false;

    }

}