Awaiting multiple Tasks with different results

Question

I have 3 tasks:

private async Task<Cat> FeedCat() {}
private async Task<House> SellHouse() {}
private async Task<Tesla> BuyCar() {}

They all need to run before my code can continue and I need the results from each as well. None of the results have anything in common with each other

How do I call and await for the 3 tasks to complete and then get the results?

Answer 1

After you use WhenAll, you can pull the results out individually with await:

var catTask = FeedCat();
var houseTask = SellHouse();
var carTask = BuyCar();

await Task.WhenAll(catTask, houseTask, carTask);

var cat = await catTask;
var house = await houseTask;
var car = await carTask;

You can also use Task.Result (since you know by this point they have all completed successfully). However, I recommend using await because it's clearly correct, while Result can cause problems in other scenarios.

Answer 2

Just await the three tasks separately, after starting them all.

var catTask = FeedCat();
var houseTask = SellHouse();
var carTask = BuyCar();

var cat = await catTask;
var house = await houseTask;
var car = await carTask;

Answer 3

If you're using C# 7, you can use a handy wrapper method like this...

public static class TaskEx
{
    public static async Task<(T1, T2)> WhenAll<T1, T2>(Task<T1> task1, Task<T2> task2)
    {
        return (await task1, await task2);
    }
}

...to enable convenient syntax like this when you want to wait on multiple tasks with different return types. You'd have to make multiple overloads for different numbers of tasks to await, of course.

var (someInt, someString) = await TaskEx.WhenAll(GetIntAsync(), GetStringAsync());

However, see Marc Gravell's answer for some optimizations around ValueTask and already-completed tasks if you intend to turn this example into something real.