Multithreading in Aspose.Slides

Introduction

While parallel work with presentations is possible (besides parsing/loading/cloning) and everything goes well (most times), there is a small chance you might get incorrect results when you use the library in multiple threads.

We strongly recommend that you do not use a single Presentation instance in a multi-threading environment because it might result in unpredictable errors or failures that are not easily detected.

It is not safe to load, save, and/or clone an instance of a Presentation class in multiple threads. Such operations are not supported. If you need to perform such tasks, you have to parallel the operations using several single-threaded processes—and each of these processes should use its own presentation instance.

Convert Presentation Slides to Images in Parallel

Let’s say we want to convert all the slides from a PowerPoint presentation to PNG images in parallel. Since it is unsafe to use a single Presentation instance in multiple threads, we split the presentation slides into separate presentations and convert the slides to images in parallel, using each presentation in a separate thread. The following code example shows how to do this.

auto inputFilePath = u"sample.pptx";
auto outputFilePathTemplate = u"slide_{0}.png";
auto imageScale = 2;

auto presentation = MakeObject<Presentation>(inputFilePath);

auto slideCount = presentation->get_Slides()->get_Count();
auto slideSize = presentation->get_SlideSize()->get_Size();

std::vector<std::future<void>> conversionTasks;

for (auto slideIndex = 0; slideIndex < slideCount; slideIndex++) {
    // Extract slide i into a separate presentation.
    auto slidePresentation = MakeObject<Presentation>();
    slidePresentation->get_SlideSize()->SetSize(slideSize.get_Width(), slideSize.get_Height(), SlideSizeScaleType::DoNotScale);
    slidePresentation->get_Slides()->RemoveAt(0);
    slidePresentation->get_Slides()->AddClone(presentation->get_Slide(slideIndex));

    // Convert the slide to an image in a separate task.
    auto slideNumber = slideIndex + 1;
    conversionTasks.push_back(std::async(std::launch::async, [slidePresentation = std::move(slidePresentation), slideNumber, outputFilePathTemplate, imageScale]() {
        SharedPtr<IImage> image = nullptr;
        try {
            auto slide = slidePresentation->get_Slide(0);

            auto image = slide->GetImage(imageScale, imageScale);
            auto imageFilePath = String::Format(outputFilePathTemplate, slideNumber);
            image->Save(imageFilePath, ImageFormat::Png);
        }
        catch (Exception e) {
            if(image != nullptr) image->Dispose();
            slidePresentation->Dispose();
        }
    }));
}

// Wait for all tasks to complete.
for (auto& task : conversionTasks) {
    task.get();
}

presentation->Dispose();