I'm working with a class that manages a game's content and I'd like to know how I'm able to block calls to the dispose method without locking onto a shared dispose-lock? The worker methods themselves are thread-safe and can be executed in parallel, and that's why I don't want to lock those methods with a shared lock the dispose-method tries to acquire when it's fired.
public void DoSomething()
{
lock (method1Lock) { /* ... */ }
}
public void Dispose()
{
lock (method1Lock)
lock (method2Lock)
lock (methodXLock)
{
}
}
is not appropriate in this case as, as I previously mentioned, the methods (DoSomething in this case) can run in parallel.
Use a ReaderWriterLock. Let the Method... code take the read side and the Dispose the write side (which is exclusive).
Related
I have a simple logger with producer consumer pattern based on BlockingCollection (code is below).
public class Logger
{
public Logger()
{
_messages = new BlockingCollection<LogMessage>(int.MaxValue);
_worker = new Thread(Work) {IsBackground = true};
_worker.Start();
}
~Logger()
{
_messages.CompleteAdding();
_worker.Join(); // Wait for the consumer's thread to finish.
//Some logic on closing log file
}
/// <summary>
/// This is message consumer thread
/// </summary>
private void Work()
{
while (!_messages.IsCompleted)
{
//Try to get data from queue
LogMessage message;
try
{
message = _messages.Take();
}
catch (ObjectDisposedException) { break; } //The BlockingCollection(Of T) has been disposed.
catch(InvalidOperationException){ continue; } //the BlockingCollection(Of T) is empty and the collection has been marked as complete for adding.
//... some simple logic to write 'message'
}
}
}
The problem is that application is not ending instantly with that. It takes 20-40 seconds to end an application and if I pause it with debugger in a middle, I see that:
1. GC.Finalize thread is set on _worker.Join();
2. _worker thread is on _messages.Take().
I would await that _messages.Take() is ended short after _messages.CompleteAdding(); But looks like it is not.
What's wrong with this finalization and how to better finalize worker thread in this situation?
P.S. I could simply drop _worker.Join() but then Work() can write something to closed file. I mean, this is concurrent non determined situation then.
Update
As a proof of concept I've renamed ~Logger() to Close() and call it at some point. It closes logger instantly. So _messages.Take() is ending right after _messages.CompleteAdding() as expected in this case.
The only explanation of the 20-40 seconds delay in ~Logger I see in high priority of the GC thread. Could there be another explanation?
In C#, Finalizers (aka destructors) are non-deterministic, which means you cannot predict when they will be called or in what order. For example in your code, it's entirely possible for the finalizer of _worker to be before after the finalizer for Logger. For this reason, you should never access managed objects (such as FileStreams etc) inside a finalizer, because the finalizers of other managed resources could have already completed, making their references invalid.
Also the finalizer will not be called until after the GC determines that a collection is necessary (due to the need for additional memory). In your case, the GC probably takes 20-40 seconds before it makes the required collection(s).
What you want to do is get rid of the finalizer and use the IDisposable interface instead (optionally with a Close() method that might provide better readability).
Then you would just call logger.Close() when it is no longer required.
void IDisposable.Dispose()
{
Close();
}
void Close()
{
_messages.CompleteAdding();
_worker.Join(); // Wait for the consumer's thread to finish.
//Some logic on closing log file
}
In general, only use a finalizer when you have unmanaged resources to clean up (for example, if you are using P/Invoke WinAPI function calls etc). If you are using only .Net classes, etc. you probably do not have any reason to use one. IDisposable is almost always the better choice, because it provides deterministic cleanup.
For more information on finalizers vs destructors, take a look here:
What is the difference between using IDisposable vs a destructor in C#?
Another change I would make in your code is using TryTake instead of Take. This gets rid of the need for the try/catch because it will not throw an exception when the collection is empty and CompleteAdding is called. It will simply return false.
private void Work()
{
//Try to get data from queue
LogMessage message;
while (_messages.TryTake(out message, Timeout.Infinite))
//... some simple logic to write 'message'
}
The two exceptions you catch in your code can still occur for other reasons such as accessing it after it is disposed or modifying the BlockingCollection's underlying collection (see MSDN for more info). But neither of those should occur in your code, because you don't hold a reference to the underlying collection, and you don't dispose of the BlockingCollection before the Work function is complete.
If you still wanted to catch those exceptions, just in case, you can place a try/catch block outside of the while loop (because you would NOT want to continue the loop after either exception occurs).
Finally, why do you specify int.MaxValue as the collection's capacity? You shouldn't do this unless you expect to routinely add close to that many messages to the collection.
So altogether, I would re-write your code as follows:
public class Logger : IDisposable
{
private BlockingCollection<LogMessage> _messages = null;
private Thread _worker = null;
private bool _started = false;
public void Start()
{
if (_started) return;
//Some logic to open log file
OpenLogFile();
_messages = new BlockingCollection<LogMessage>(); //int.MaxValue is the default upper-bound
_worker = new Thread(Work) { IsBackground = true };
_worker.Start();
_started = true;
}
public void Stop()
{
if (!_started) return;
// prohibit adding new messages to the queue,
// and cause TryTake to return false when the queue becomes empty.
_messages.CompleteAdding();
// Wait for the consumer's thread to finish.
_worker.Join();
//Dispose managed resources
_worker.Dispose();
_messages.Dispose();
//Some logic to close log file
CloseLogFile();
_started = false;
}
/// <summary>
/// Implements IDiposable
/// In this case, it is simply an alias for Stop()
/// </summary>
void IDisposable.Dispose()
{
Stop();
}
/// <summary>
/// This is message consumer thread
/// </summary>
private void Work()
{
LogMessage message;
//Try to get data from queue
while(_messages.TryTake(out message, Timeout.Infinite))
WriteLogMessage(message); //... some simple logic to write 'message'
}
}
As you can see, I added Start() and Stop() methods to enable/disable queue processing. If you want, you can call Start() from your constructor, but in general, you probably don't want expensive operations (such as thread creation) in a constructor. I used Start/Stop instead of Open/Close, because it seemed to make more sense for a logger, but that's just a personal preference, and either pair would work fine. As I mentioned before, you don't even have to use a Stop or Close method. Simply adding Dispose() is enough, but some classes (like Streams etc) use Close or Stop as an alias for Dispose just to make the code more readable.
I have a class that uses the Thread class:
class A
{
public Thread thread
{ get; set; }
}
Should I implement IDisposable and set Thread property to null?
class A : IDisposable
{
public Thread Thread
{ get; set; }
protected bool Disposed
{ get; set; }
public void Dispose()
{
Dispose(true);
GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
}
protected virtual void Dispose(bool disposing)
{
if (!this.Disposed)
{
if (disposing)
{
if (Thread != null)
Thread = null;
}
Disposed = true;
}
}
}
Or not?
Why?
You implement IDisposable only when your class is handling an unmanaged object, resources or other IDisposable objects. A Thread is not an unmanaged object and will get garbage collected when nothing is referencing it or when the process handling it is terminated. Since Thread is not implementing IDisposable, your class referencing it does not need to implement it either.
Optionally, for IDisposable within the scope of a method, they can be wrapped in a using statement and the Dispose() method is automatically called when the scope is exited.
It depends what your thread is doing. If your thread is performing a long running task that may run indefinitely, then I would consider that thread as a resource (which will not be garbage collected). For example consider if the thread is designed to poll some state indefinitely, or consume items from a queue (like a thread-pool thread consumes tasks or a TCP server consumes new connections) etc. In this case, I would say the natural effect of disposing your class would be to free up this thread resource. Setting it to null is not really useful in this case. Rather Dispose should probably involve flagging a synchronization event (or maybe a CancellationToken) to notify the thread that it should finish up its infinite task, and then the disposing thread should wait some time for the thread to finish (join). As always with joins, be careful of a deadlock scenario and consider some alternative action if the thread refuses to terminate. For obvious reasons I would not do this join in the finalizer.
As an example of what I'm meaning, consider the scenario where your class A is actually class MyTcpListener, designed to listen and wait for new TCP connections on a given port indefinitely. Then consider what you expect following (somewhat unlikely) code to do:
using (MyTcpListener listener = new MyTcpListener(port:1234))
{
// Do something here
}
// Create another one. This would fail if the previous Dispose
// did not unbind from the port.
using (MyTcpListener listener = new MyTcpListener(port:1234))
{
// Do something else here
}
Assuming I know the constructor of MyTcpListener creates a listener thread, I would expect that after the Dispose call has returned that the MyTcpListener would no longer be bound to the TCP port - i.e. that the TCP listener thread would have fully terminated. It goes without saying that if you didn't provide some mechanism to stop the listener that there would be a resource leak. The stopping mechanism could be a call to some method "Stop", but I personally think the "Dispose" pattern fits this scenario more cleanly since forgetting to stop something does not generally imply a resource leak.
Your code may call for different assumptions, so I would suggest judging it on the scenario. If your thread is short-running, e.g. it has some known finite task to complete and then it will terminate on its own, then I would say that disposing is less critical or perhaps useless.
Suppose you are invoking methods asynchronously onto the UI thread.
With
UIDispatcher.BeginInvoke( new Action(_insert), DispatcherPriority.Normal, new object[] { } )
you are doing the invocation. From now the runtime environment decides when to execute the method whereas the program continues its 'normal' path of execution.
I am now wondering whether there are any mechanisms to synchronize these asynchronously executed methods when they are returning ? It seems that there are pretty much the same issues as when using multiple threads.
But is a returning method that has been invoked asynchronously before considered to be a thread ? It don't seem so because usual synchronizing efforts like
lock (someObject) { //... }
or using dedicated locks seem not to work.
Appendix:
My actual situation where this issue appears is as follows:
The asynchronously invoked method calls as its last statement a returnmethod of a static class. Inside this return method a commonly used resource (a List) has to be synchronized. Consider the following (overview-like) code-snipped to exemplify:
// A simple method that gets invoked asynchronously
public void _insert () {
// do some code
StaticClass.Returned();
}
public static StaticClass {
//...
public static void Returned () {
// use a shared resource !
}
}
Either use the .NET's asynchronous pattern, a BackgroundWorker, or a ManualResetEvent
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms228969.aspx
I have a .NET 4 WCF service that maintains a thread-safe, in-memory, dictionary cache of objects (SynchronizedObject). I want to provide safe, concurrent access to read and modify both the collection and the objects in the collection. Safely modifying the objects and the cache can be accomplished with reader-writer locks.
I am running into trouble providing read access to an object in the cache. My Read method returns a SynchronizedObject, but I do not know how to elegantly ensure no other threads are modifying the object while WCF is serializing the SynchronizedObject.
I have tried placing the Read return clause inside the read-lock and setting a breakpoint in a custom XmlObjectSerializer. When the XmlObjectSerializer::WriteObject(Stream,object) method is called, a read-lock is not held on the SynchronizedObject.
I am specifically concerned with the following scenario:
Thread A calls Read(int). Execution continues until just after the return statement. By this point, the finally has also been executed, and the read lock on the SynchronizedObject has been released. Thread A's execution is interrupted.
Thread B calls Modify(int) for the same id. The write lock is available and obtained. Sometime between obtaining the write lock and releasing it, Thread B is interrupted.
Thread A restarts and serialization continues. Thread B has a write-lock on the same SynchronizedObject, and is in the middle of some critical section, but Thread A is reading the state of the SynchronizedObject and thus returns a potentially invalid object to the caller of Read(int).
I see two options:
Maintain a custom XmlObjectSerializer that grabs the read-lock before calling the base.WriteObject(Stream, object) method, and releases it after. I do not like this option because sub-classing and overriding a framework serialization function to perform a certain action if a the object to be serialized matches a certain type smells to me.
Create a deep-copy of a SynchronizedObject in the Read method while the read-lock is held, release the lock, and return the deep copy. I do not like this option because there will be many sub-classes of SynchronizedObject that I would have to implement and maintain correct deep-copiers for and deep-copies could be expensive.
What other options do I have? How should I implement the thread-safe Read method?
I have provided a dummy Service below for more explicit references:
public class Service : IService
{
IDictionary<int, SynchronizedObject> collection = new Dictionary<int, SynchronizedObject>();
ReaderWriterLockSlim rwLock = new ReaderWriterLockSlim();
public SynchronizedObject Read(int id)
{
rwLock.EnterReadLock();
try
{
SynchronizedObject result = collection[id];
result.rwLock.EnterReadLock();
try
{
return result;
}
finally
{
result.rwLock.ExitReadLock();
}
}
finally
{
rwLock.ExitReadLock();
}
}
public void ModifyObject(int id)
{
rwLock.EnterReadLock();
try
{
SynchronizedObject obj = collection[id];
obj.rwLock.EnterWriteLock();
try
{
// modify obj
}
finally
{
obj.rwLock.ExitWriteLock();
}
}
finally
{
rwLock.ExitReadLock();
}
}
public void ModifyCollection(int id)
{
rwLock.EnterWriteLock();
try
{
// modify collection
}
finally
{
rwLock.ExitWriteLock();
}
}
}
public class SynchronizedObject
{
public ReaderWriterLockSlim rwLock { get; private set; }
public SynchronizedObject()
{
rwLock = new ReaderWriterLockSlim();
}
}
New answer
Based on your new information and clearer scenario, I believe you want to use something similar to functional programming's immutability feature. Instead of serializing the object that could be changed, make a copy that no other thread could possibly access, then serialize that.
Previous (not valuable) answer
From http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.threading.readerwriterlockslim.enterwritelock.aspx:
If other threads have entered the lock
in read mode, a thread that calls the
EnterWriteLock method blocks until
those threads have exited read mode.
When there are threads waiting to
enter write mode, additional threads
that try to enter read mode or
upgradeable mode block until all the
threads waiting to enter write mode
have either timed out or entered write
mode and then exited from it.
So, all you need to do is call EnterWriteLock and ExitWriteLock inside ModifyObject(). Your attempt to make sure you have both a read and a write lock is actually stopping the code from working.
Let's say I have this class Logger that is logging strings in a low-priority worker thread, which isn't a background thread. Strings are queued in Logger.WriteLine and munched in Logger.Worker. No queued strings are allowed to be lost. Roughly like this (implementation, locking, synchronizing, etc. omitted for clarity):
public class Logger
{
private Thread workerThread;
private Queue<String> logTexts;
private AutoResetEvent logEvent;
private AutoResetEvent stopEvent;
// Locks the queue, adds the text to it and sets the log event.
public void WriteLine(String text);
// Sets the stop event without waiting for the thread to stop.
public void AsyncStop();
// Waits for any of the log event or stop event to be signalled.
// If log event is set, it locks the queue, grabs the texts and logs them.
// If stop event is set, it exits the function and the thread.
private void Worker();
}
Since the worker thread is a foreground thread, I have to be able to deterministically stop it if the process should be able to finish.
Question: Is the general recommendation in this scenario to let Logger implement IDisposable and stop the worker thread in Dispose()? Something like this:
public class Logger : IDisposable
{
...
public void Dispose()
{
AsyncStop();
this.workerThread.Join();
}
}
Or are there better ways of handling it?
That would certainly work - a Thread qualifies as a resource, etc. The main benefit of IDisposable comes from the using statement, so it really depends on whether the typical use for the owner of the object is to use the object for a duration of time in a single method - i.e.
void Foo() {
...
using(var obj = YourObject()) {
... some loop?
}
...
}
If that makes sense (perhaps a work pump), then fine; IDisposable would be helpful for the case when an exception is thrown. If that isn't the typical use then other than highlighting that it needs some kind of cleanup, it isn't quite so helpful.
That's usually the best, as long as you have a deterministic way to dispose the logger (using block on the main part of the app, try/finally, shutdown handler, etc).
It may be a good idea to have the thread hold a WeakReference to the managing object, and periodically check to ensure that it still exists. In theory, you could use a finalizer to nudge your thread (note that the finalizer, unlike the Dispose, should not do a Thread.Join), but it may be a good idea to allow for the possibility of the finalizer failing.
You should be aware that if user doesn't call Dispose manually (via using or otherwise) application will never exit, as Thread object will hold strong reference to your Logger. Answer provided by supercat is much better general solution to this problem.