GUI Error Reporting

I'm using a background worker in order to get data from a database. My problem is that I'm struggling to report any errors in the database activity.

I've tried straight up spawning a Dialog (Windows Form that I've created) from the DatabaseUpdater class. However, this hangs and I'm left with a white box instead of the error message. I've tried spawning the Dialog in a separate thread - this results in the Dialog appearing and disappearing almost instantly. Obviously I wasn't entirely surprised by this, but attempts at maintaining the Dialog resulted in the same white box effect.

I guess my question is really what is the best practice for displaying errors coming from threaded activity?

From stackoverflow

• This is a good resource for multithreading and WinForms: Synchronizing calls to the UI in a multi-threaded application

  Dave : I'm so glad that I found your answer here when searching... that is a great article!

• Assuming the BackgroundWorker task in invoked from the UI thread, you should check for and display any errors in the handler for the RunWorkerCompleted event - do not try to handle them in the DoWork handler method...

  Bailz : It's a slight workaround - possibly not entirely correct - but what I'm doing is storing the last generated Exception in the DatabaseUpdater class. Once the BackgroundWorker completes I check if the stored Exception is null, if not report the error. Seems to do the job!

  Lee : The RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs passed to the RunWorkerCompleted event contains an Error property which contains any exception.

• Possibly not what you are looking for, but you might get some mileage out of the InvokeRequired property and Invoke methods on your main form.