async Indexer in C#

Question

Recently, we have movied to EF 6 and we have begun to use EF async commands. For example in my repository I have the following method:

// Gets entities asynchron in a range starting from skip.
// Take defines the maximum number of entities to be returned.
public async Task<IEnumerable<TEntity>> GetRangeAsync(int skip, int take)
{
  var entities = this.AddIncludes(this.DbContext.Set<TEntity>())
        .OrderBy(this.SortSpec.PropertyName)
        .Skip(skip)
        .Take(take)
        .ToListAsync();

  return await entities;
}

Now I have to modfiy the UI for the async data retrieving. Below is my UI class; This class is bound to WPF.

public sealed class RepositoryCollectionView<TEntity, TEntityViewModel> : IList<TEntityViewModel>,
                                                                          ICollectionView,
                                                                          IEditableCollectionView,
                                                                          IComparer
...                                                       
public TEntityViewModel this[int index]
{
 get
  {
       return await this.GetItem(index).Result;
  }
  set
  {
    throw new NotSupportedException();
  }
}
...
...
...

The problem: In the UI I have create a new method which called GetItemAsync(index) and I need to call this method from the Indexer; When I write the keyword async to the indexer like that: public async TEntityViewModel this[int index] I get the following error "The modfier 'async' is not valid for this item"

Any idea? any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

You simply can't make indexers async. From section 10.15 of the C# 5 specification:

A method or anonymous function with the async modifier is called an async function.

async is listed as one of the valid modifiers for methods (section 10.6), but not for indexers (10.9).

Bear in mind that an async method can only return void, Task and Task<T> - but you wouldn't want a setter to accept a Task<T> or Task, so what would the property type usefully be? (And why even have a setter if you're not supporting it?)

Given that it sound like a caller can already use GetItem - which should be GetItemAsync if it's returning a Task<TEntityViewModel> - I don't see that an indexer is going to help you.