Hi James,

I talk about using threads and specifically about why I needed it for sending newsletters in this article under developer docs:

Using the Task Framework

You can use the LetterSendTask as an example for implementing your own task that can run on a background thread. The key thing is to be aware that your thread can be killed if the app pool is recycled while it is running.

Hope it helps,

Joe

If you look at the StartTask method in LetterSendTask.cs you'll see the code for starting a new thread is very simple, just one line really:

if (!ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new WaitCallback(RunTaskOnNewThread), this))
{
throw new Exception("Couldn't queue the task on a new thread.");
}

You pass a method with a signature that takes one object into the contrustor of the WaitCallback object and pass it to ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkerItem. In the case of the task, the object it passes is itself "this"

private static void RunTaskOnNewThread(object oTask)
{
if (oTask == null) return;
LetterSendTask task = (LetterSendTask)oTask;

log.Info("deserialized LetterSendTask task");

// give a little time to make sure the taskqueue was updated after spawning the thread
Thread.Sleep(10000); // 10 seconds

task.RunTask();

log.Info("started LetterSendTask task");

}

Hope it helps,

Joe

A really good blog post about ASP.NET threading came through my google reader today.

http://blogs.msdn.com/benchr/archive/2008/09/03/does-asp-net-magically-handle-thread-safety-for-you.aspx

Best,

Joe