How to call asynchronous method from synchronous m

Question

I have a public async void Foo() method that I want to call from synchronous method. So far all I have seen from MSDN documentation is calling async methods via async methods, but my whole program is not built with async methods.

Is this even possible?

Here's one example of calling these methods from an asynchronous method: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh300224(v=vs.110).aspx

Now I'm looking into calling these async methods from sync methods.

Answer 1

You can call any asynchronous method from synchronous code, that is, until you need to await on them, in which case they have to be marked async too.

As a lot of people are suggesting here, you could call Wait() or Result on the resulting task in your synchronous method, but then you end up with a blocking call in that method, which sort of defeats the purpose of async.

I you really can't make your method async and you don't want to lock up the synchronous method, then you're going to have to use a callback method by passing it as parameter to the ContinueWith method on task.

Answer 2

The most accepted answer is not entirely correct. There IS a solution that works in every situation: an ad-hoc message pump (SynchronizationContext).

The calling thread will be blocked as expected, while still ensuring that all continuations called from the async function don't deadlock as they'll be marshaled to the ad-hoc SynchronizationContext (message pump) running on the calling thread.

The code of the ad-hoc message pump helper:

using System;
using System.Collections.Concurrent;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace Microsoft.Threading
{
    /// <summary>Provides a pump that supports running asynchronous methods on the current thread.</summary>
    public static class AsyncPump
    {
        /// <summary>Runs the specified asynchronous method.</summary>
        /// <param name="asyncMethod">The asynchronous method to execute.</param>
        public static void Run(Action asyncMethod)
        {
            if (asyncMethod == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("asyncMethod");

            var prevCtx = SynchronizationContext.Current;
            try
            {
                // Establish the new context
                var syncCtx = new SingleThreadSynchronizationContext(true);
                SynchronizationContext.SetSynchronizationContext(syncCtx);

                // Invoke the function
                syncCtx.OperationStarted();
                asyncMethod();
                syncCtx.OperationCompleted();

                // Pump continuations and propagate any exceptions
                syncCtx.RunOnCurrentThread();
            }
            finally { SynchronizationContext.SetSynchronizationContext(prevCtx); }
        }

        /// <summary>Runs the specified asynchronous method.</summary>
        /// <param name="asyncMethod">The asynchronous method to execute.</param>
        public static void Run(Func<Task> asyncMethod)
        {
            if (asyncMethod == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("asyncMethod");

            var prevCtx = SynchronizationContext.Current;
            try
            {
                // Establish the new context
                var syncCtx = new SingleThreadSynchronizationContext(false);
                SynchronizationContext.SetSynchronizationContext(syncCtx);

                // Invoke the function and alert the context to when it completes
                var t = asyncMethod();
                if (t == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("No task provided.");
                t.ContinueWith(delegate { syncCtx.Complete(); }, TaskScheduler.Default);

                // Pump continuations and propagate any exceptions
                syncCtx.RunOnCurrentThread();
                t.GetAwaiter().GetResult();
            }
            finally { SynchronizationContext.SetSynchronizationContext(prevCtx); }
        }

        /// <summary>Runs the specified asynchronous method.</summary>
        /// <param name="asyncMethod">The asynchronous method to execute.</param>
        public static T Run<T>(Func<Task<T>> asyncMethod)
        {
            if (asyncMethod == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("asyncMethod");

            var prevCtx = SynchronizationContext.Current;
            try
            {
                // Establish the new context
                var syncCtx = new SingleThreadSynchronizationContext(false);
                SynchronizationContext.SetSynchronizationContext(syncCtx);

                // Invoke the function and alert the context to when it completes
                var t = asyncMethod();
                if (t == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("No task provided.");
                t.ContinueWith(delegate { syncCtx.Complete(); }, TaskScheduler.Default);

                // Pump continuations and propagate any exceptions
                syncCtx.RunOnCurrentThread();
                return t.GetAwaiter().GetResult();
            }
            finally { SynchronizationContext.SetSynchronizationContext(prevCtx); }
        }

        /// <summary>Provides a SynchronizationContext that's single-threaded.</summary>
        private sealed class SingleThreadSynchronizationContext : SynchronizationContext
        {
            /// <summary>The queue of work items.</summary>
            private readonly BlockingCollection<KeyValuePair<SendOrPostCallback, object>> m_queue =
                new BlockingCollection<KeyValuePair<SendOrPostCallback, object>>();
            /// <summary>The processing thread.</summary>
            private readonly Thread m_thread = Thread.CurrentThread;
            /// <summary>The number of outstanding operations.</summary>
            private int m_operationCount = 0;
            /// <summary>Whether to track operations m_operationCount.</summary>
            private readonly bool m_trackOperations;

            /// <summary>Initializes the context.</summary>
            /// <param name="trackOperations">Whether to track operation count.</param>
            internal SingleThreadSynchronizationContext(bool trackOperations)
            {
                m_trackOperations = trackOperations;
            }

            /// <summary>Dispatches an asynchronous message to the synchronization context.</summary>
            /// <param name="d">The System.Threading.SendOrPostCallback delegate to call.</param>
            /// <param name="state">The object passed to the delegate.</param>
            public override void Post(SendOrPostCallback d, object state)
            {
                if (d == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("d");
                m_queue.Add(new KeyValuePair<SendOrPostCallback, object>(d, state));
            }

            /// <summary>Not supported.</summary>
            public override void Send(SendOrPostCallback d, object state)
            {
                throw new NotSupportedException("Synchronously sending is not supported.");
            }

            /// <summary>Runs an loop to process all queued work items.</summary>
            public void RunOnCurrentThread()
            {
                foreach (var workItem in m_queue.GetConsumingEnumerable())
                    workItem.Key(workItem.Value);
            }

            /// <summary>Notifies the context that no more work will arrive.</summary>
            public void Complete() { m_queue.CompleteAdding(); }

            /// <summary>Invoked when an async operation is started.</summary>
            public override void OperationStarted()
            {
                if (m_trackOperations)
                    Interlocked.Increment(ref m_operationCount);
            }

            /// <summary>Invoked when an async operation is completed.</summary>
            public override void OperationCompleted()
            {
                if (m_trackOperations &&
                    Interlocked.Decrement(ref m_operationCount) == 0)
                    Complete();
            }
        }
    }
}

Usage:

AsyncPump.Run(() => FooAsync(...));

More detailed description of the async pump is available here.

Answer 3

To anyone paying attention to this question anymore...

If you look in Microsoft.VisualStudio.Services.WebApi there's a class called TaskExtensions. Within that class you'll see the static extension method Task.SyncResult(), which like totally just blocks the thread till the task returns.

Internally it calls task.GetAwaiter().GetResult() which is pretty simple, however it's overloaded to work on any async method that return Task, Task<T> or Task<HttpResponseMessage>... syntactic sugar, baby... daddy's got a sweet tooth.

It looks like ...GetAwaiter().GetResult() is the MS-official way to execute async code in a blocking context. Seems to work very fine for my use case.

Answer 4

   //Example from non UI thread -    
   private void SaveAssetAsDraft()
    {
        SaveAssetDataAsDraft();
    }
    private async Task<bool> SaveAssetDataAsDraft()
    {
       var id = await _assetServiceManager.SavePendingAssetAsDraft();
       return true;   
    }
   //UI Thread - 
   var result = Task.Run(() => SaveAssetDataAsDraft().Result).Result;

Answer 5

Asynchronous programming does "grow" through the code base. It has been compared to a zombie virus. The best solution is to allow it to grow, but sometimes that's not possible.

I have written a few types in my Nito.AsyncEx library for dealing with a partially-asynchronous code base. There's no solution that works in every situation, though.

Solution A

If you have a simple asynchronous method that doesn't need to synchronize back to its context, then you can use Task.WaitAndUnwrapException:

var task = MyAsyncMethod();
var result = task.WaitAndUnwrapException();

You do not want to use Task.Wait or Task.Result because they wrap exceptions in AggregateException.

This solution is only appropriate if MyAsyncMethod does not synchronize back to its context. In other words, every await in MyAsyncMethod should end with ConfigureAwait(false). This means it can't update any UI elements or access the ASP.NET request context.

Solution B

If MyAsyncMethod does need to synchronize back to its context, then you may be able to use AsyncContext.RunTask to provide a nested context:

var result = AsyncContext.RunTask(MyAsyncMethod).Result;

---

*Update 4/14/2014: In more recent versions of the library the API is as follows:

var result = AsyncContext.Run(MyAsyncMethod);

---

(It's OK to use Task.Result in this example because RunTask will propagate Task exceptions).

The reason you may need AsyncContext.RunTask instead of Task.WaitAndUnwrapException is because of a rather subtle deadlock possibility that happens on WinForms/WPF/SL/ASP.NET:

1. A synchronous method calls an async method, obtaining a Task.
2. The synchronous method does a blocking wait on the Task.
3. The async method uses await without ConfigureAwait.
4. The Task cannot complete in this situation because it only completes when the async method is finished; the async method cannot complete because it is attempting to schedule its continuation to the SynchronizationContext, and WinForms/WPF/SL/ASP.NET will not allow the continuation to run because the synchronous method is already running in that context.

This is one reason why it's a good idea to use ConfigureAwait(false) within every async method as much as possible.

Solution C

AsyncContext.RunTask won't work in every scenario. For example, if the async method awaits something that requires a UI event to complete, then you'll deadlock even with the nested context. In that case, you could start the async method on the thread pool:

var task = TaskEx.RunEx(async () => await MyAsyncMethod());
var result = task.WaitAndUnwrapException();

However, this solution requires a MyAsyncMethod that will work in the thread pool context. So it can't update UI elements or access the ASP.NET request context. And in that case, you may as well add ConfigureAwait(false) to its await statements, and use solution A.

Answer 6

Adding a solution that finally solved my problem, hopefully saves somebody's time.

Firstly read a couple articles of Stephen Cleary:

• Async and Await
• Don't Block on Async Code

From the "two best practices" in "Don't Block on Async Code", the first one didn't work for me and the second one wasn't applicable (basically if I can use await, I do!).

So here is my workaround: wrap the call inside a Task.Run<>(async () => await FunctionAsync()); and hopefully no deadlock anymore.

Here is my code:

public class LogReader
{
    ILogger _logger;

    public LogReader(ILogger logger)
    {
        _logger = logger;
    }

    public LogEntity GetLog()
    {
        Task<LogEntity> task = Task.Run<LogEntity>(async () => await GetLogAsync());
        return task.Result;
    }

    public async Task<LogEntity> GetLogAsync()
    {
        var result = await _logger.GetAsync();
        // more code here...
        return result as LogEntity;
    }
}