How to make an Asynchronous Method return a value?

From C# 5.0, you can specify the method as

public async Task<bool> doAsyncOperation()
{
    // do work
    return true;
}

bool result = await doAsyncOperation();

There are a few ways of doing that... the simplest is to have the async method also do the follow-on operation. Another popular approach is to pass in a callback, i.e.

void RunFooAsync(..., Action<bool> callback) {
     // do some stuff
     bool result = ...

     if(callback != null) callback(result);
}

Another approach would be to raise an event (with the result in the event-args data) when the async operation is complete.

Also, if you are using the TPL, you can use ContinueWith:

Task<bool> outerTask = ...;
outerTask.ContinueWith(task =>
{
    bool result = task.Result;
    // do something with that
});

Probably the simplest way to do it is to create a delegate and then BeginInvoke, followed by a wait at some time in the future, and an EndInvoke.

public bool Foo(){
    Thread.Sleep(100000); // Do work
    return true;
}

public SomeMethod()
{
    var fooCaller = new Func<bool>(Foo);
    // Call the method asynchronously
    var asyncResult = fooCaller.BeginInvoke(null, null);

    // Potentially do other work while the asynchronous method is executing.

    // Finally, wait for result
    asyncResult.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne();
    bool fooResult = fooCaller.EndInvoke(asyncResult);

    Console.WriteLine("Foo returned {0}", fooResult);
}

Use a BackgroundWorker. It will allow you to get callbacks on completion and allow you to track progress. You can set the Result value on the event arguments to the resulting value.

    public void UseBackgroundWorker()
    {
        var worker = new BackgroundWorker();
        worker.DoWork += DoWork;
        worker.RunWorkerCompleted += WorkDone;
        worker.RunWorkerAsync("input");
    }

    public void DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
    {
        e.Result = e.Argument.Equals("input");
        Thread.Sleep(1000);
    }

    public void WorkDone(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
    {
        var result = (bool) e.Result;
    }