Cast Task to Task<object> in C# without h

Question

I have static class full of extension methods where each of the methods is asynchronous and returns some value - like this:

public static class MyContextExtensions{
  public static async Task<bool> SomeFunction(this DbContext myContext){
    bool output = false;
    //...doing stuff with myContext
    return output;
  }

  public static async Task<List<string>> SomeOtherFunction(this DbContext myContext){
    List<string> output = new List<string>();
    //...doing stuff with myContext
    return output;
  }
}

My goal is to be able to invoke any of these methods from a single method in another class and return their result as an object. It would look something like this:

public class MyHub: Hub{
  public async Task<object> InvokeContextExtension(string methodName){
    using(var context = new DbContext()){
      //This fails because of invalid cast
      return await (Task<object>)typeof(MyContextExtensions).GetMethod(methodName).Invoke(null, context);
    }
  }
}

The problem is that the cast fails. My dilemma is that I cannot pass any type parameters to the "InvokeContextExtension" method because it is part of a SignalR hub and is invoked by javascript. And to a certain extent I don't care about the return type of the extension method because it is just going to get serialized to JSON and sent back to the javascript client. However I do have to cast the value returned by Invoke as a Task in order to use the await operator. And I have to supply a generic parameter with that "Task" otherwise it will treat the return type as void. So it all comes down to how do I successfully cast Task with generic parameter T to a Task with a generic parameter of object where T represents the output of the extension method.

Answer 1

You can do it in two steps - await the task using the base class, then harvest the result using reflection or dynamic:

using(var context = new DbContext()) {
    // Get the task
    Task task = (Task)typeof(MyContextExtensions).GetMethod(methodName).Invoke(null, context);
    // Make sure it runs to completion
    await task.ConfigureAwait(false);
    // Harvest the result
    return (object)((dynamic)task).Result;
}

Here is a complete running example that puts in context the above technique of calling Task through reflection:

class MainClass {
    public static void Main(string[] args) {
        var t1 = Task.Run(async () => Console.WriteLine(await Bar("Foo1")));
        var t2 = Task.Run(async () => Console.WriteLine(await Bar("Foo2")));
        Task.WaitAll(t1, t2);
    }
    public static async Task<object> Bar(string name) {
        Task t = (Task)typeof(MainClass).GetMethod(name).Invoke(null, new object[] { "bar" });
        await t.ConfigureAwait(false);
        return (object)((dynamic)t).Result;
    }
    public static Task<string> Foo1(string s) {
        return Task.FromResult("hello");
    }
    public static Task<bool> Foo2(string s) {
        return Task.FromResult(true);
    }
}

Answer 2

This is not a good idea to mix await with dynamic/reflection invoke since await is a compiler instruction that generates a lot of code around invoked method and there is no real sense to "emulate" compiler work with more reflections, continuations, wrappers and etc.

Since what you need is to manage your code at RUN TIME then forget the asyc await syntax sugar which works at compile time. Rewrite SomeFunction and SomeOtherFunction without them, and start operations in your own tasks created at run time. You will get the same behavior but with crystal clear code.