How do I communicate an event between App Domains?

Question

I have two app domains, one parent creating the child domain. In the child domain, there is a MarshalByRef object, being communicated with using .NET Remoting. An object running in the parent domain invokes the wrapper for the remote object as part of the application's function:

public class ScanningTask : Task
{
    private class Loader : MarshalByRef
    {
        public void Load(IEnumerable<string> paths)
        {
            ...
        }

        public event EventHandler<LoadEventArgs> OnLoad;
    }

    public void RunTask()
    {
        var domain = AppDomain.CreateDomain("LoadDomain");

        var loader = (Loader)domain.CreateInstanceFromAndUnwrap(
            typeof(Loader).Assembly.Location,
            typeof(Loader).FullName);

        loader.Load(...);

        AppDomain.Unload(domain);
    }
}

Most code removed for brevity.

This Loader object exposes an OnLoad event I'd like to capture in the parent domain. If I just add an event handler delegate, it tries to serialize the ScanningTask into the child domain and throws an exception about it not being serializable.

What I really want is for the event to be communicated across the domains. Any clever suggestions as to how?

Answer 1

Based on this solution, you could make your Task class task inherit from MarshalByRefObject as well. This would solve the serialization issue as it would pass a cross-AppDomain serialized reference which would be used to attach to the event.

public class ScanningTask : MarshalByRefObject
{
    private class Loader : MarshalByRefObject
    {
        public void Load()
        {
            if (OnLoad != null)
                OnLoad(this, EventArgs.Empty);
        }

        public event EventHandler OnLoad;
    }

    public void RunTask()
    {
        var domain = AppDomain.CreateDomain("LoadDomain");

        var loader = (Loader)domain.CreateInstanceFromAndUnwrap(
            typeof(Loader).Assembly.Location,
            typeof(Loader).FullName);

        loader.OnLoad += new EventHandler(loader_OnLoad);
        loader.Load();

        AppDomain.Unload(domain);
    }

    void loader_OnLoad(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Console.Write("load event called");
    }
}

If for existing codebase reasons the base class Task cannot be made to inherit from MarshalByRefObject, your solution could be a proxy class that inherits from Loader (therefore being a MarshalByRefObject itself) and forwards calls to an actual unwrapped instance.

public class ScanningTask
{
    private class Loader : MarshalByRefObject
    {
        public virtual void Load()
        {
            RaiseOnLoad(this);
        }

        protected void RaiseOnLoad(Loader loader)
        {
            if (OnLoad != null)
                OnLoad(loader, EventArgs.Empty);
        }

        public event EventHandler OnLoad;
    }

    private class LoaderProxy : Loader
    {
        public readonly Loader Instance;

        public LoaderProxy(Loader loaderInstance)
        {
            this.Instance = loaderInstance;
            this.Instance.OnLoad += new EventHandler((sender, e) => RaiseOnLoad(this.Instance));
        }

        public override void Load()
        {
            this.Instance.Load();
        }
    }

    public void RunTask()
    {
        var domain = AppDomain.CreateDomain("LoadDomain");

        var loader = (Loader)domain.CreateInstanceFromAndUnwrap(
            typeof(Loader).Assembly.Location,
            typeof(Loader).FullName);

        var proxy = new LoaderProxy(loader);
        proxy.OnLoad += new EventHandler(loader_OnLoad);
        loader.Load(); // same as proxy.Load()

        AppDomain.Unload(domain);
    }

    void loader_OnLoad(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Console.Write("load event called");
    }
}