How to call an async method from a getter or setter?

Solution 1:

There is no technical reason that async properties are not allowed in C#. It was a purposeful design decision, because "asynchronous properties" is an oxymoron.

Properties should return current values; they should not be kicking off background operations.

Usually, when someone wants an "asynchronous property", what they really want is one of these:

1. An asynchronous method that returns a value. In this case, change the property to an async method.
2. A value that can be used in data-binding but must be calculated/retrieved asynchronously. In this case, either use an async factory method for the containing object or use an async InitAsync() method. The data-bound value will be default(T) until the value is calculated/retrieved.
3. A value that is expensive to create, but should be cached for future use. In this case, use AsyncLazy from my blog or AsyncEx library. This will give you an awaitable property.

Update: I cover asynchronous properties in one of my recent "async OOP" blog posts.

Solution 2:

You can't call it asynchronously, since there is no asynchronous property support, only async methods. As such, there are two options, both taking advantage of the fact that asynchronous methods in the CTP are really just a method that returns Task<T> or Task:

// Make the property return a Task<T>
public Task<IEnumerable> MyList
{
    get
    {
         // Just call the method
         return MyAsyncMethod();
    }
}

Or:

// Make the property blocking
public IEnumerable MyList
{
    get
    {
         // Block via .Result
         return MyAsyncMethod().Result;
    }
}

Solution 3:

I really needed the call to originate from the get method, due to my decoupled architecture. So I came up with the following implementation.

Usage: Title is in a ViewModel or an object you could statically declare as a page resource. Bind to it and the value will get populated without blocking the UI, when getTitle() returns.

string _Title;
public string Title
{
    get
    {
        if (_Title == null)
        {   
            Deployment.Current.Dispatcher.InvokeAsync(async () => { Title = await getTitle(); });
        }
        return _Title;
    }
    set
    {
        if (value != _Title)
        {
            _Title = value;
            RaisePropertyChanged("Title");
        }
    }
}

Solution 4:

You can use Task like this :

public int SelectedTab
        {
            get => selected_tab;
            set
            {
                selected_tab = value;

                new Task(async () =>
                {
                    await newTab.ScaleTo(0.8);
                }).Start();
            }
        }