(Ruby) Starting an Asynchronous Task

Chilkat methods that have a name ending in "Async" return a task object. The task object can be run asynchronously on Chilkat's background thread pool. The purpose of this example is to demonstrate how a Task is started via the Run method. It also demonstrates how an application can check on the status of the task, and get the task return value. See the online reference documentation for the full details of the task and task chain objects. Also see the "Task" category on example-code.com for more examples.

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require 'chilkat'

# All Chilkat classes can be unlocked at once at the beginning of a program
# by calling UnlockBundle.  It requires a Bundle unlock code.
chilkatGlob = Chilkat::CkGlobal.new()
success = chilkatGlob.UnlockBundle("Anything for 30-day trial.")
if (success != true)
    print chilkatGlob.lastErrorText() + "\n";
    exit
end

mailman = Chilkat::CkMailMan.new()

# Set the SMTP server and any required settings.
mailman.put_SmtpHost("smtp.mymailserver.com")
mailman.put_SmtpUsername("myLogin")
mailman.put_SmtpPassword("myPassword")
mailman.put_StartTLS(true)

# Create a new email object
email = Chilkat::CkEmail.new()

email.put_Subject("This is a test")
email.put_Body("This is a test")
email.put_From("Chilkat Support <support@chilkatsoft.com>")
success = email.AddTo("Chilkat Admin","admin@chilkatsoft.com")

# Call the async version of the SendEmail method to return a task object.
# The task object is loaded, but is in the Inert state -- meaning it is
# not yet scheduled to run on Chilkat's background thread pool.
# task is a CkTask
task = mailman.SendEmailAsync(email)
if (mailman.get_LastMethodSuccess() == false)
    print mailman.lastErrorText() + "\n";
    exit
end

# Schedule the task for running on the thread pool.  This changes the task's state
# from Inert to Live.
success = task.Run()
if (success != true)
    print task.lastErrorText() + "\n";

    exit
end

# The application is now free to do anything else
# while the email is being sent.

# For this example, we'll simply sleep and periodically
# check to see if the SendEmail if finished.  While checking
# however, we'll report on the progress.
curPctDone = 0
while task.get_Finished() != true

    if (task.get_PercentDone() != curPctDone)
        curPctDone = task.get_PercentDone()
        print curPctDone.to_s() + " percent done" + "\n";
    end

    # Sleep 100 ms.
    task.SleepMs(100)

end

# A finished task could be one that was canceled, aborted, or truly finished.  

# If the task was "canceled", it was canceled prior to actually starting.  This could
# happen if the task was canceled while waiting in a thread pool queue to be scheduled by Chilkat's
# background thread pool scheduler.  

# If the task was "aborted", it indicates that it was canceled while running in a background thread.  
# The ResultErrorText will likely indicate that the task was aborted.

# If the task "completed", then it ran to completion, but the actual success/failure of the method
# is determined by the result obtained via a GetResult* method.  (A "completed" task will
# have a StatusInt equal to 7.   If the task finished, but was not completed, then it must've
# been aborted or canceled:
if (task.get_StatusInt() != 7)
    print "Task did not complete." + "\n";
    print "task status: " + task.status() + "\n";

    exit
end

# The SendEmail method returns a boolean.  Therefore, after the task is finished,
# we can get the boolean result by calling GetResultBool.  This is the return value had
# we called SendEmail synchronously.
success = task.GetResultBool()
if (success != true)
    # The task's ResultErrorText contains what would have been in the LastErrorText property had
    # the SendEmail method been called synchronously.
    print task.resultErrorText() + "\n";
else
    print "Email sent asynchronously." + "\n";
end

success = mailman.CloseSmtpConnection()
if (success != true)
    print "Connection to SMTP server not closed cleanly." + "\n";

end