In my application I have a List<Task<Boolean>>
that I Task.Wait[..]
on to determine if they completed successfully (Result = true
). Though if during my waiting a Task
completes and returns a falsey value I want to cancel all other Task
I am waiting on and do something based on this.
I have created two "ugly" methods to do this
// Create a CancellationToken and List<Task<..>> to work with
CancellationToken myCToken = new CancellationToken();
List<Task<Boolean>> myTaskList = new List<Task<Boolean>>();
//-- Method 1 --
// Wait for one of the Tasks to complete and get its result
Boolean finishedTaskResult = myTaskList[Task.WaitAny(myTaskList.ToArray(), myCToken)].Result;
// Continue waiting for Tasks to complete until there are none left or one returns false
while (myTaskList.Count > 0 && finishedTaskResult)
{
// Wait for the next Task to complete
finishedTaskResult = myTaskList[Task.WaitAny(myTaskList.ToArray(), myCToken)].Result;
if (!finishedTaskResult) break;
}
// Act on finishTaskResult here
// -- Method 2 --
// Create a label to
WaitForOneCompletion:
int completedTaskIndex = Task.WaitAny(myTaskList.ToArray(), myCToken);
if (myTaskList[completedTaskIndex].Result)
{
myTaskList.RemoveAt(completedTaskIndex);
goto WaitForOneCompletion;
}
else
;// One task has failed to completed, handle appropriately
I was wondering if there was a cleaner way to do this, possibly with LINQ?
You can use the following method to take a sequence of tasks and create a new sequence of tasks that represents the initial tasks but returned in the order that they all complete:
public static IEnumerable<Task<T>> Order<T>(this IEnumerable<Task<T>> tasks)
{
var taskList = tasks.ToList();
var taskSources = new BlockingCollection<TaskCompletionSource<T>>();
var taskSourceList = new List<TaskCompletionSource<T>>(taskList.Count);
foreach (var task in taskList)
{
var newSource = new TaskCompletionSource<T>();
taskSources.Add(newSource);
taskSourceList.Add(newSource);
task.ContinueWith(t =>
{
var source = taskSources.Take();
if (t.IsCanceled)
source.TrySetCanceled();
else if (t.IsFaulted)
source.TrySetException(t.Exception.InnerExceptions);
else if (t.IsCompleted)
source.TrySetResult(t.Result);
}, CancellationToken.None, TaskContinuationOptions.PreferFairness, TaskScheduler.Default);
}
return taskSourceList.Select(tcs => tcs.Task);
}
Now that you have the ability to order the tasks based on their completion you can write the code basically exactly as your requirements dictate:
foreach(var task in myTaskList.Order())
if(!await task)
cancellationTokenSource.Cancel();
Using Task.WhenAny
implementation, you can create like an extension overload that receives a filter too.
This method returns a Task
that will complete when any of the supplied tasks have completed and the result pass the filter.
Something like this:
static class TasksExtensions
{
public static Task<Task<T>> WhenAny<T>(this IList<Task<T>> tasks, Func<T, bool> filter)
{
CompleteOnInvokePromiseFilter<T> action = new CompleteOnInvokePromiseFilter<T>(filter);
bool flag = false;
for (int i = 0; i < tasks.Count; i++)
{
Task<T> completingTask = tasks[i];
if (!flag)
{
if (action.IsCompleted) flag = true;
else if (completingTask.IsCompleted)
{
action.Invoke(completingTask);
flag = true;
}
else completingTask.ContinueWith(t =>
{
action.Invoke(t);
});
}
}
return action.Task;
}
}
class CompleteOnInvokePromiseFilter<T>
{
private int firstTaskAlreadyCompleted;
private TaskCompletionSource<Task<T>> source;
private Func<T, bool> filter;
public CompleteOnInvokePromiseFilter(Func<T, bool> filter)
{
this.filter = filter;
source = new TaskCompletionSource<Task<T>>();
}
public void Invoke(Task<T> completingTask)
{
if (completingTask.Status == TaskStatus.RanToCompletion &&
filter(completingTask.Result) &&
Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref firstTaskAlreadyCompleted, 1, 0) == 0)
{
source.TrySetResult(completingTask);
}
}
public Task<Task<T>> Task { get { return source.Task; } }
public bool IsCompleted { get { return source.Task.IsCompleted; } }
}
You can use this extension method like this:
List<Task<int>> tasks = new List<Task<int>>();
...Initialize Tasks...
var task = await tasks.WhenAny(x => x % 2 == 0);
//In your case would be something like tasks.WhenAny(b => b);
Jon Skeet, Stephen Toub, and myself all have variations on the "order by completion" approach.
However, I find that usually people don't need this kind of complexity, if they focus their attention a bit differently.
In this case, you have a collection of tasks, and want them canceled as soon as one of them returns false
. Instead of thinking about it from a controller perspective ("how can the calling code do this"), think about it from the task perspective ("how can each task do this").
If you introduce a higher-level asynchronous operation of "do the work and then cancel if necessary", you'll find your calling code cleans up nicely:
public async Task DoWorkAndCancel(Func<CancellationToken, Task<bool>> work,
CancellationTokenSource cts)
{
if (!await work(cts.Token))
cts.Cancel();
}
List<Func<CancellationToken, Task<bool>>> allWork = ...;
var cts = new CancellationTokenSource();
var tasks = allWork.Select(x => DoWorkAndCancel(x, cts));
await Task.WhenAll(tasks);