Handling a long process

As part of my app, I need to process a file the user uploads, which could take some time. So far I'm redirecting to a page that has an animated gif of a never ending progress bar, but I'm wondering what to do from there.

I can't really start my long process in the PageLoad event, because the page looks like it's hung. Doesn't seem to be a PageDoneLoading event, so I'm thinking of either a timer or a META refresh and redirect, or maybe spawning a thread to handle the process.

Is there an accepted way of doing this? Haven't tried yet, but unsure of how/if a spawned thread can redirect to a page that shows the result of the process.

Any ideas appreciated,
Mike

Well, not sure if I'm doing this right, tried a few things. Timer didn't seen to work at all, that is, when the timer fired, I tried a Response.Redirect, and nothing happened, the page stayed where it is. Tried a META refresh, that just appeared to create a pause - the animated gif paused for a while, then finally went to the page. Didn't try threading (yet), but not sure if I need to, as I *think* I've got something that will work.

In the page load, I changed the Response.BufferedOutput to false, did a Response.Write to write a "please wait" message along with the img tag to show the animated gif, then a Response.Flush(). From there, looks like I can do some processing, then Response.Write() the status of what's going on. So as each step of the long process happens, I can write out what's going on and any informational messages.

I guess this will work, and it's cool because the user can see every step. I still have no idea of what the accepted method is. If anyone has any thoughts, I'd be interested.

In classic asp the method you used is the standard way of dealing with long process. I assume it would be one of the way you do it in asp.net too. Few weeks ago i tried something similar using threading but couldnt get it to work. I didnt try much though used something similar to your solution..

Thanks for the reply Danial. I searched a bunch and could never quite find an answer, good to know that it's ok to do. And it seems to work just fine.

Thanks,
Mike