Method call if not null in C#

Question

Is it possible to somehow shorten this statement?

if (obj != null)
    obj.SomeMethod();

because I happen to write this a lot and it gets pretty annoying. The only thing I can think of is to implement Null Object pattern, but that's not what I can do every time and it's certainly not a solution to shorten syntax.

And similar problem with events, where

public event Func<string> MyEvent;

and then invoke

if (MyEvent != null)
    MyEvent.Invoke();

Answer 1

Cerating extention method like one suggested does not really solve issues with race conditions, but rather hide them.

public static void SafeInvoke(this EventHandler handler, object sender)
{
    if (handler != null) handler(sender, EventArgs.Empty);
}

As stated this code is the elegant equivalent to solution with temporary variable, but...

The problem with both that it's possible that subsciber of the event could be called AFTER it has unsubscribed from the event. This is possible because unsubscription can happen after delegate instance is copied to the temp variable (or passed as parameter in the method above), but before delegate is invoked.

In general the behaviour of the client code is unpredictable in such case: component state could not allow to handle event notification already. It's possible to write client code in the way to handle it, but it would put unnecesssary responsibility to the client.

The only known way to ensure thread safity is to use lock statement for the sender of the event. This ensures that all subscriptions\unsubscriptions\invocation are serialized.

To be more accurate lock should be applied to the same sync object used in add\remove event accessor methods which is be default 'this'.

Answer 2

A quick extension method:

    public static void IfNotNull<T>(this T obj, Action<T> action, Action actionIfNull = null) where T : class {
        if(obj != null) {
            action(obj);
        } else if ( actionIfNull != null ) {
            actionIfNull();
        }
    }

example:

  string str = null;
  str.IfNotNull(s => Console.Write(s.Length));
  str.IfNotNull(s => Console.Write(s.Length), () => Console.Write("null"));

or alternatively:

    public static TR IfNotNull<T, TR>(this T obj, Func<T, TR> func, Func<TR> ifNull = null) where T : class {
        return obj != null ? func(obj) : (ifNull != null ? ifNull() : default(TR));
    }

example:

    string str = null;
    Console.Write(str.IfNotNull(s => s.Length.ToString());
    Console.Write(str.IfNotNull(s => s.Length.ToString(), () =>  "null"));

Answer 3

Events can be initialized with an empty default delegate which is never removed:

public event EventHandler MyEvent = delegate { };

No null-checking necessary.

[Update, thanks to Bevan for pointing this out]

Be aware of the possible performance impact, though. A quick micro benchmark I did indicates that handling an event with no subscribers is 2-3 times slower when using the the "default delegate" pattern. (On my dual core 2.5GHz laptop that means 279ms : 785ms for raising 50 million not-subscribed events.). For application hot spots, that might be an issue to consider.

Answer 4

There is a little-known null operator in C# for this, ??. May be helpful:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/09/20/the-new-c-null-coalescing-operator-and-using-it-with-linq.aspx