Dispownership

Bringing ownership to disposables.

Well, this may be a bit overpromising, but this library does provide useful utilities for working with disposables.

Packages

• Dispownership
  
• Dispownership.Sources
  

Examples

These examples use the TempSubdirectory type as a stand-in for a disposable value.

Borrowed or Owned

using Dispownership;

public sealed class Example : IDisposable
{
    private readonly Disposable<TempSubdirectory> _tempDirectory;

    public Example()
    {
        // No temp directory provided, let's create one ourselves.
        // We have to ensure cleanup ourselves, hence owned.
        _tempDirectory = Disposable.Owned(TempSubdirectory.Create());
    }

    public Example(TempSubdirectory tempDirectory)
    {
        // Temp directory provided by caller.
        // We want the caller to be responsible for disposal, hence "borrowed".
        _tempDirectory = Disposable.Borrowed(tempDirectory);
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        // The wrapper takes care of tracking if disposal should be propagated or not,
        // depending on whether the value was wrapped using Owned or Borrowed.
        _tempDirectory.Dispose();
    }
}

"Move"

using Dispownership;

public TempSubdirectory CreateTempSubdirectoryWithExampleFiles()
{
    using var tempDirectory = Disposable.Owned(TempSubdirectory.Create());
    //                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    //  This creates a wrapper around our disposable, allowing us to later "move" the disposable.

    File.WriteAllText(Path.Combine(tempDirectory.Value.FullName, "example.txt"), contents: "Example");
    //   ^^^^^^^^^^^^
    // If this throws, our disposable will be cleaned up by the wrapper.

    return tempDirectory.Take();
    //                  ^^^^^^
    //   This "moves" the disposable out of the wrapper,
    //   preventing the wrapper from disposing our value when the function returns.
}

Detailed Example

Sometimes you might create a disposable, that you eventually want to return. But before that, you perform some work on the disposable:

public TempSubdirectory CreateTempSubdirectoryWithExampleFiles()
{
    var tempDirectory = TempSubdirectory.Create();
    File.WriteAllText(Path.Combine(tempDirectory.FullName, "example.txt"), contents: "Example");
    return tempDirectory;
}

But wait, what if File.WriteAllText fails? We still want the temp directory to be cleaned up then. Adding a using to var tempDirectory is no option, because it would dispose the temp directory before the function returns.

The solution is to add a try / catch and dispose in case of errors:

public TempSubdirectory CreateTempSubdirectoryWithExampleFiles()
{
    var tempDirectory = TempSubdirectory.Create();

    try
    {
        File.WriteAllText(Path.Combine(tempDirectory.FullName, "example.txt"), contents: "Example");
        return tempDirectory;
    }
    catch
    {
        tempDirectory.Dispose();
        throw;
    }
}

This is not as readable compared to the ease of using declarations. Using Dispownership we can rewrite example as follows, preserving behaviour:

using Dispownership;

public TempSubdirectory CreateTempSubdirectoryWithExampleFiles()
{
    using var tempDirectory = Disposable.Owned(TempSubdirectory.Create());
    //                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    //  This creates a wrapper around our disposable, allowing us to later "move" the disposable.

    File.WriteAllText(Path.Combine(tempDirectory.Value.FullName, "example.txt"), contents: "Example");
    //   ^^^^^^^^^^^^
    // If this throws, our disposable will be cleaned up by the wrapper.

    return tempDirectory.Take();
    //                  ^^^^^^
    //   This "moves" the disposable out of the wrapper,
    //   preventing the wrapper from disposing our value when the function returns.
}