How can I force the bot to both wait for a specific event and continue to poll for events at the same time?

Question

I am using the SteamBot application.

I have a command that is supposed to act when a specific event occurs. In this particular case, I, as the administrator, issue the command and the bot waits for a trade request and then continue on with my logic. What I can't figure out is how to make it wait until the trade request has occurred and then proceed.

Assume that I have issued the command and am now in the function that handles that command's behavior. This is a very simple example of what I'm trying to do.

private void giveItemsToUser()
{
    Bot.GetInventory();

    // Wait here

    var items = Trade.CurrentSchema.GetItemsByCraftingMaterial('hat');
    foreach (var item in items)
    {
        added += Trade.AddAllItemsByDefindex(item.Defindex, amount);
    }

    Trade.SetReady(true);
    Trade.AcceptTrade();
}

In the // Wait here section, I want the bot to stop until the trade has started. Then, once it has started, it can proceed and add items as expected.

I've tried adding an inTrade (initialized to false) variable that is set to true in the OnTradeInit function and putting the bot to sleep until that is true.

while (!inTrade)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Not in trade. Sleeping for 10 seconds.");
    Thread.Sleep(10000);
}

This, however, blocks the main thread and throws it into a tight loop. When it wakes up, it immediately checks if the variable is true and if not puts it back to sleep. There isn't time for the HandleSteamMessage function in Bot.cs to handle anything - even if the bot did receive an event while sleeping.

I've tried to use an EventWaitHandle, but that never seems to fire.

EventWaitHandle waitForInTrade = new EventWaitHandle(false, EventResetMode.AutoReset, "OnTradeRequest");
waitForInTrade.WaitOne(30000);
Console.WriteLine("In trade? " + inTrade.ToString());  

This pauses the main thread for 30 seconds (due to the timeout passed in WaitOne) and then continues as expected. However, inTrade is still false, even if a trade request had been received. Since I'm not in a trade at that point, and subsequent code would be invalid.

So, what is the proper way to handle this type of interaction?

I cross posted this to the /r/steambot subreddit as well. I hope that is not a problem, especially since some of the comments on Github mentioned posting here for better assistance.

Answer 1

Your approach is fundamentally incorrect. Steambot is event-based, so your logic needs to be based on responding to events in the event-handlers, not waiting for the events to occur.

So in other words, when the admin issues the Give Items command, you can't simply call a GiveItemsToUser() method. Instead, you'll need something more like QueueItemsToBeGivenToUser() which creates a list of items to give to the user and stores it in a private variable. Then when OnTradeInit() is called, you can check if that user has any items queued up, and if they do, add those items to the trade.