How to use Task.WhenAll() correctly

Question

I am trying to use Task.WhenAll to await completion of multiple tasks.

My code is below - it is supposed to launch multiple async tasks, each of which retrieves a bus route and then adds them to a local array. However, Task.WhenAll(...) returns immediately, and the count of the local routes array is zero. This seems strange, since I would expect the various await statements within each Task to mean that the flow is suspended, and the Task does not return until it's finished.

List<Task> monitoredTasks = new List<Task>();
foreach (BusRouteIdentifier bri in stop.services)
{
    BusRouteRequest req = new BusRouteRequest(bri.id);

    // Start a new task to fetch the route for each stop
    Task getRouteTask = Task.Factory.StartNew(async () =>
    {
        var route = await BusDataProviderManager.DataProvider.DataBroker.getRoute(req);

            // Add the route to our array (on UI thread as it's observed)
            await dispatcher.RunAsync(Windows.UI.Core.CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal, delegate
            {
                this.routes.Add(route);
            });
    });

    // Store the task in our monitoring list
    monitoredTasks .Add(getRouteTask);
}

Debug.WriteLine("Awaiting WHENALL");
await Task.WhenAll(monitoredTasks );
Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("WHENALL returned (routes count is {0} ", this.routes.Count));

this.OnWillEndFetchingRoutes(new EventArgs());

I'm obviously doing something wrong - but what?

Answer 1

This was down to a basic lack of understanding of how async-await really works.

The inner task was returning flow to the outer task, which then finished before the await ever returned.

To achieve what I wanted, I needed to refactor as follows:

List<Task<BusRoute>> routeRetrievalTasks = new List<Task<BusRoute>>();
foreach (BusRouteIdentifier bri in stop.services)
{
    BusRouteRequest req = new BusRouteRequest(bri.id);
    routeRetrievalTasks.Add(BusDataProviderManager.DataProvider.DataBroker.getRoute(req));
}

foreach (var task in routeRetrievalTasks)
{
    var route = await task;
    this.routes.Add(route); // triggers events
}

Thanks to Dave Smits

Answer 2

I suspect the problem is your call to Task.Factory.StartNew(). I suspect you're ending up with a Task<Task>, and you're only finding out when it's effectively started the task.

Try this instead:

Func<Task> taskFunc = async () =>
{
    var route = await BusDataProviderManager.DataProvider.DataBroker.getRoute(req);

    // Add the route to our array (on UI thread as it's observed)
    await dispatcher.RunAsync(Windows.UI.Core.CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal, delegate
    {
        this.routes.Add(route);
    });

}

Task getRouteTask = Task.Run(taskFunc);