How to Async Files.ReadAllLines and await for results?
I have the following code,
private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
button1.IsEnabled = false;
var s = File.ReadAllLines("Words.txt").ToList(); // my WPF app hangs here
// do something with s
button1.IsEnabled = true;
}
Words.txt
has a ton of words which i read into the s variable, I am trying to make use of async
and await
keywords in C# 5 using Async CTP Library
so the WPF app doesn't hang. So far I have the following code,
private async void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
button1.IsEnabled = false;
Task<string[]> ws = Task.Factory.FromAsync<string[]>(
// What do i have here? there are so many overloads
); // is this the right way to do?
var s = await File.ReadAllLines("Words.txt").ToList(); // what more do i do here apart from having the await keyword?
// do something with s
button1.IsEnabled = true;
}
The goal is to read the file in async rather than sync, to avoid freezing of WPF app.
Any help is appreciated, Thanks!
UPDATE: Async versions of File.ReadAll[Lines|Bytes|Text]
, File.AppendAll[Lines|Text]
and File.WriteAll[Lines|Bytes|Text]
have now been merged into .NET Core and shipped with .NET Core 2.0. They are also included in .NET Standard 2.1.
Using Task.Run
, which essentially is a wrapper for Task.Factory.StartNew
, for asynchronous wrappers is a code smell.
If you don't want to waste a CPU thread by using a blocking function, you should await a truly asynchronous IO method, StreamReader.ReadToEndAsync
, like this:
using (var reader = File.OpenText("Words.txt"))
{
var fileText = await reader.ReadToEndAsync();
// Do something with fileText...
}
This will get the whole file as a string
instead of a List<string>
. If you need lines instead, you could easily split the string afterwards, like this:
using (var reader = File.OpenText("Words.txt"))
{
var fileText = await reader.ReadToEndAsync();
return fileText.Split(new[] { Environment.NewLine }, StringSplitOptions.None);
}
EDIT: Here are some methods to achieve the same code as File.ReadAllLines
, but in a truly asynchronous manner. The code is based on the implementation of File.ReadAllLines
itself:
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
public static class FileEx
{
/// <summary>
/// This is the same default buffer size as
/// <see cref="StreamReader"/> and <see cref="FileStream"/>.
/// </summary>
private const int DefaultBufferSize = 4096;
/// <summary>
/// Indicates that
/// 1. The file is to be used for asynchronous reading.
/// 2. The file is to be accessed sequentially from beginning to end.
/// </summary>
private const FileOptions DefaultOptions = FileOptions.Asynchronous | FileOptions.SequentialScan;
public static Task<string[]> ReadAllLinesAsync(string path)
{
return ReadAllLinesAsync(path, Encoding.UTF8);
}
public static async Task<string[]> ReadAllLinesAsync(string path, Encoding encoding)
{
var lines = new List<string>();
// Open the FileStream with the same FileMode, FileAccess
// and FileShare as a call to File.OpenText would've done.
using (var stream = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read, DefaultBufferSize, DefaultOptions))
using (var reader = new StreamReader(stream, encoding))
{
string line;
while ((line = await reader.ReadLineAsync()) != null)
{
lines.Add(line);
}
}
return lines.ToArray();
}
}