Trying to use the await
keyword in a LINQ
query and I get this:
The 'await' operator may only be used in a query expression within the first collection expression of the initial 'from' clause or within the collection expression of a 'join' clause
Sample Code:
var data = (from id in ids
let d = await LoadDataAsync(id)
select d);
Is it not possible to await something in a LINQ
query, or does it need to be structured a different way?
LINQ has very limited support for async
/await
. For LINQ-to-objects, the only really useful operation I know of is to do a Select
with an async
delegate (which results in a sequence of tasks).
List<T> data = new List<T>();
foreach (var id in ids)
data.Add(await LoadDataAsync(id));
If you can do LoadDataAsync
in parallel safely, your example could be rewritten as:
T[] data = await Task.WhenAll(ids.Select(id => LoadDataAsync(id)));
You can define some async linq operations by yourself (for linq to objects):
for example: you can write your own WhereAsync extension method:
public static async Task<IEnumerable<T>> WhereAsync<T>(
this IEnumerable<T> target, Func<T, Task<bool>> predicateAsync)
{
var tasks = target.Select(async x => new { Predicate = await predicateAsync(x).ConfigureAwait(false), Value = x }).ToArray();
var results = await Task.WhenAll(tasks).ConfigureAwait(false);
return results.Where(x => x.Predicate).Select(x => x.Value);
}
And use it like that:
var ints = new List<int> { 1, 2, 3 };
var smallInts = await ints.WhereAsync(IsSmallIntAsync);
Using reactive extensions, it is possible to handle the results of a linq query asynchronously like this:
(from d in ids
select LoadDataAsync(d).ToObservable()).Merge()
This is gives you an observable stream you can respond to in various ways. For example, you can then .Buffer the results into a list with a timeout.
The above in essence says "for every d in ids, apply an asynchronous function to it, which yields a task for each d, and treat that as an observable of an individual result (ToObservable), and treat all those observables together as a single observable stream (Merge)