How to deal with a class than encapsulates a disposible instance?

Question

interface IMyInterace
{
void Open();
object Read();
void Close();
}

class MyImplementation : IMyInterface
{
public void Open() { /* instantiates disposible class */ }
//...
public void Close() { /* calls .Dispose(); */ }

}

Is there a good way to deal with this type of situation to ensure that disposible instances inside the class get called? (There is no signal to callers that they must call 'Close' except in documentation.) Implementations of IMyInterface do not necessarily encapsulate IDisposible instances and are closed and reopened repeatedly throughout the application's lifetime.

I'm thinking of doing this:

• Implement IDisposible in MyImplementation.
• Set Dispose() to call Close().
• Add a call to Close() or Dispose() to the begining of Open to ensure previous call was closed.

Users of IMyInterface do not know what implementation they are using, so I'm not sure how much value making MyImplementation disposible has, and again, not all implementations will encapsulate IDisposibles.

Answer 1

The standard way to handle this is to simply have MyImplementation implement IDisposable.