Async Task.WhenAll with timeout

Question

Is there a way in the new async dotnet 4.5 library to set a timeout on the Task.WhenAll method. I want to fetch several sources and stop after say 5 seconds and skip the sources that weren't finished.

Answer 1

What you describe seems like a very common demand however I could not find anywhere an example of this. And I searched a lot... I finally created the following:

TimeSpan timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5.0);

Task<Task>[] tasksOfTasks =
{
    Task.WhenAny(SomeTaskAsync("a"), Task.Delay(timeout)),
    Task.WhenAny(SomeTaskAsync("b"), Task.Delay(timeout)),
    Task.WhenAny(SomeTaskAsync("c"), Task.Delay(timeout))
};

Task[] completedTasks = await Task.WhenAll(tasksOfTasks);

List<MyResult> = completedTasks.OfType<Task<MyResult>>().Select(task => task.Result).ToList();

I assume here a method SomeTaskAsync that returns Task<MyResult>.

From the members of completedTasks, only tasks of type MyResult are our own tasks that managed to beat the clock. Task.Delay returns a different type. This requires some compromise on typing, but still works beautifully and quite simple.

(The array can of course be built dynamically using a query + ToArray).

• Note that this implementation does not require SomeTaskAsync to receive a cancellation token.

Answer 2

I think a clearer, more robust option that also does exception handling right would be to use Task.WhenAny on each task together with a timeout task, go through all the completed tasks and filter out the timeout ones, and use await Task.WhenAll() instead of Task.Result to gather all the results.

Here's a complete working solution:

static async Task<TResult[]> WhenAll<TResult>(IEnumerable<Task<TResult>> tasks, TimeSpan timeout)
{
    var timeoutTask = Task.Delay(timeout).ContinueWith(_ => default(TResult));
    var completedTasks = 
        (await Task.WhenAll(tasks.Select(task => Task.WhenAny(task, timeoutTask)))).
        Where(task => task != timeoutTask);
    return await Task.WhenAll(completedTasks);
}

Answer 3

Seems like the Task.WaitAll overload with the timeout parameter is all you need - if it returns true, then you know they all completed - otherwise, you can filter on IsCompleted.

if (Task.WaitAll(tasks, myTimeout) == false)
{
    tasks = tasks.Where(t => t.IsCompleted);
}
...

Answer 4

I came to the following piece of code that does what I needed:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Json;
using System.Threading;

namespace MyAsync
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var cts = new CancellationTokenSource();
            Console.WriteLine("Start Main");
            List<Task<List<MyObject>>> listoftasks = new List<Task<List<MyObject>>>();
            listoftasks.Add(GetGoogle(cts));
            listoftasks.Add(GetTwitter(cts));
            listoftasks.Add(GetSleep(cts));
            listoftasks.Add(GetxSleep(cts));

            List<MyObject>[] arrayofanswers = Task.WhenAll(listoftasks).Result;
            List<MyObject> answer = new List<MyObject>();
            foreach (List<MyObject> answers in arrayofanswers)
            {
                answer.AddRange(answers);
            }
            foreach (MyObject o in answer)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("{0} - {1}", o.name, o.origin);
            }
            Console.WriteLine("Press <Enter>");
            Console.ReadLine();
        } 

        static async Task<List<MyObject>> GetGoogle(CancellationTokenSource cts) 
        {
            try
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Start GetGoogle");
                List<MyObject> l = new List<MyObject>();
                var client = new HttpClient();
                Task<HttpResponseMessage> awaitable = client.GetAsync("http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&q=broersa", cts.Token);
                HttpResponseMessage res = await awaitable;
                Console.WriteLine("After GetGoogle GetAsync");
                dynamic data = JsonValue.Parse(res.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result);
                Console.WriteLine("After GetGoogle ReadAsStringAsync");
                foreach (var r in data.responseData.results)
                {
                    l.Add(new MyObject() { name = r.titleNoFormatting, origin = "google" });
                }
                return l;
            }
            catch (TaskCanceledException)
            {
                return new List<MyObject>();
            }
        }

        static async Task<List<MyObject>> GetTwitter(CancellationTokenSource cts)
        {
            try
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Start GetTwitter");
                List<MyObject> l = new List<MyObject>();
                var client = new HttpClient();
                Task<HttpResponseMessage> awaitable = client.GetAsync("http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=broersa&rpp=5&include_entities=true&result_type=mixed",cts.Token);
                HttpResponseMessage res = await awaitable;
                Console.WriteLine("After GetTwitter GetAsync");
                dynamic data = JsonValue.Parse(res.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result);
                Console.WriteLine("After GetTwitter ReadAsStringAsync");
                foreach (var r in data.results)
                {
                    l.Add(new MyObject() { name = r.text, origin = "twitter" });
                }
                return l;
            }
            catch (TaskCanceledException)
            {
                return new List<MyObject>();
            }
        }

        static async Task<List<MyObject>> GetSleep(CancellationTokenSource cts)
        {
            try
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Start GetSleep");
                List<MyObject> l = new List<MyObject>();
                await Task.Delay(5000,cts.Token);
                l.Add(new MyObject() { name = "Slept well", origin = "sleep" });
                return l;
            }
            catch (TaskCanceledException)
            {
                return new List<MyObject>();
            }

        } 

        static async Task<List<MyObject>> GetxSleep(CancellationTokenSource cts)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Start GetxSleep");
            List<MyObject> l = new List<MyObject>();
            await Task.Delay(2000);
            cts.Cancel();
            l.Add(new MyObject() { name = "Slept short", origin = "xsleep" });
            return l;
        } 

    }
}

My explanation is in my blogpost: http://blog.bekijkhet.com/2012/03/c-async-examples-whenall-whenany.html

Answer 5

In addition to timeout, I also check the cancellation which is useful if you are building a web app.

public static async Task WhenAll(
    IEnumerable<Task> tasks, 
    int millisecondsTimeOut,
    CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
    using(Task timeoutTask = Task.Delay(millisecondsTimeOut))
    using(Task cancellationMonitorTask = Task.Delay(-1, cancellationToken))
    {
        Task completedTask = await Task.WhenAny(
            Task.WhenAll(tasks), 
            timeoutTask, 
            cancellationMonitorTask
        );

        if (completedTask == timeoutTask)
        {
            throw new TimeoutException();
        }
        if (completedTask == cancellationMonitorTask)
        {
            throw new OperationCanceledException();
        }
        await completedTask;
    }
}