suggestions for a wxDownloadThread

[Francesco Montorsi]

Hi all,
     I'm not expert at all with multi-threading programming but I need 
to write a wxThread-derived class to handle downloads of stuff from WWW.

I possibly want this class to have the following features:

  1) fire-and-forget: since the download could be launched from one 
function and then handled by others I'd like to have no cleanup to do at 
all, thus I'd be in favour of a wxTHREAD_DETACHED

  2) events: the download should send events to a wxEvtHandler object 
about progresses done and completion.

and here comes the problem:

  3) I want to be able to eventually abort a download once it has started

Can I use a detached thread and still be able to get feature #3?

AFAIU a detached thread should never be tested:

    myDetachedThread *p = new myDetachedThread;
    p->GetSomething();       // ERROR! the thread could not exist anymore!!!

right?

So, how can I communicate from the main thread to a detached thread ?
Detached thread -> main thread communication can be done through events 
but I wonder how can I communicate from the main thread the "abort" 
command to the detached thread...

any idea ?
am I forced to use a joinable thread ?


Thanks,
Francesco



BTW: I think that a wxDownloadThread with the 3 features above should 
really be part of wxWidgets as anyone using a GUI and in need to 
download a file needs to wrap wxURL::GetInputStream in a separate thread 
to avoid blocking the application. Maybe I could submit it as a patch to 
wx when it's done?