Using chilkat to extract RAR files with progress bar?

Question

Does anyone know how to show the progress of archives extracting, when using chilkat? I already have a progress bar called "progressBar1" on my form. At the moment the whole program freezes when extraction is started. Maybe have another thread? I'm using this code:

Chilkat.Rar rar = new Chilkat.Rar();

bool success;

success = rar.Open("abc123.rar");
if (success != true) {
    MessageBox.Show(rar.LastErrorText);
    return;
}

success = rar.Unrar("c:/temp/unrarDest/");
if (success != true) {
    MessageBox.Show(rar.LastErrorText);
}
else {
    MessageBox.Show("Success.");
}

If anyone has any alternative ways to extract .rar files, it would be great to know.
Thanks.

Thanks Tom Cabanski and Chris Tybur. I've got it working now using the BackgroundWorker component, and by calling it by using "backgroundWorker1.RunWorkerAsync();". Still haven't figured out how to make the progress bar work though. — Joey Morani
I don't know much about chilkat, but if that library can somehow generate status events while the UnRar method is extracting from the archive, you can handle those events and call the ReportProgress method of the BackgroundWorker component. In your form you would then handle the BackgroundWorker ProgressChanged event, and in that handler you would increment your progress bar. See stackoverflow.com/questions/614111/running-class-as-new-thread for more info. — Chris Tybur

Tom Cabanski Tom Cabanski · Accepted Answer · 2010-04-24T13:37:40

You are exactly correct. You would want to do the extraction in a background thread. The background thread should fire events to update the progress bar. Make sure to use Form.Invoke in your event handler when you make the call to update the progress bar.

Using chilkat to extract RAR files with progress bar?

2 Answers