Queuing asynchronous task in C#

Question

I have few methods that report some data to Data base. We want to invoke all calls to Data service asynchronously. These calls to data service are all over and so we want to make sure that these DS calls are executed one after another in order at any given time. Initially, i was using async await on each of these methods and each of the calls were executed asynchronously but we found out if they are out of sequence then there are room for errors.

So, i thought we should queue all these asynchronous tasks and send them in a separate thread but i want to know what options we have? I came across 'SemaphoreSlim' . Will this be appropriate in my use case? Or what other options will suit my use case? Please, guide me.

So, what i have in my code currently

public static SemaphoreSlim mutex = new SemaphoreSlim(1);

//first DS call 

 public async Task SendModuleDataToDSAsync(Module parameters)
    {
        var tasks1 = new List<Task>();
        var tasks2 = new List<Task>();

        //await mutex.WaitAsync(); **//is this correct way to use SemaphoreSlim ?**
        foreach (var setting in Module.param)
        {
           Task job1 = SaveModule(setting);
           tasks1.Add(job1);
           Task job2= SaveModule(GetAdvancedData(setting));
           tasks2.Add(job2);
        }

        await Task.WhenAll(tasks1);
        await Task.WhenAll(tasks2);

        //mutex.Release(); // **is this correct?**
    }

 private async Task SaveModule(Module setting)
    {
        await Task.Run(() =>
            {
             // Invokes Calls to DS
             ... 
            });
    }

//somewhere down the main thread, invoking second call to DS

  //Second DS Call
 private async Task SendInstrumentSettingsToDS(<param1>, <param2>)
 {
    //await mutex.WaitAsync();// **is this correct?**
    await Task.Run(() =>
            {
                 //TrackInstrumentInfoToDS
                 //mutex.Release();// **is this correct?**
            });
    if(param2)
    {
        await Task.Run(() =>
               {
                  //TrackParam2InstrumentInfoToDS
               });
    }
 }

Answer 1

Initially, i was using async await on each of these methods and each of the calls were executed asynchronously but we found out if they are out of sequence then there are room for errors.

So, i thought we should queue all these asynchronous tasks and send them in a separate thread but i want to know what options we have? I came across 'SemaphoreSlim' .

SemaphoreSlim does restrict asynchronous code to running one at a time, and is a valid form of mutual exclusion. However, since "out of sequence" calls can cause errors, then SemaphoreSlim is not an appropriate solution since it does not guarantee FIFO.

In a more general sense, no synchronization primitive guarantees FIFO because that can cause problems due to side effects like lock convoys. On the other hand, it is natural for data structures to be strictly FIFO.

So, you'll need to use your own FIFO queue, rather than having an implicit execution queue. Channels is a nice, performant, async-compatible queue, but since you're on an older version of C#/.NET, BlockingCollection<T> would work:

public sealed class ExecutionQueue
{
  private readonly BlockingCollection<Func<Task>> _queue = new BlockingCollection<Func<Task>>();

  public ExecutionQueue() => Completion = Task.Run(() => ProcessQueueAsync());

  public Task Completion { get; }

  public void Complete() => _queue.CompleteAdding();

  private async Task ProcessQueueAsync()
  {
    foreach (var value in _queue.GetConsumingEnumerable())
      await value();
  }
}

The only tricky part with this setup is how to queue work. From the perspective of the code queueing the work, they want to know when the lambda is executed, not when the lambda is queued. From the perspective of the queue method (which I'm calling Run), the method needs to complete its returned task only after the lambda is executed. So, you can write the queue method something like this:

public Task Run(Func<Task> lambda)
{
  var tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<object>();
  _queue.Add(async () =>
  {
    // Execute the lambda and propagate the results to the Task returned from Run
    try
    {
      await lambda();
      tcs.TrySetResult(null);
    }
    catch (OperationCanceledException ex)
    {
      tcs.TrySetCanceled(ex.CancellationToken);
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
      tcs.TrySetException(ex);
    }
  });
  return tcs.Task;
}

This queueing method isn't as perfect as it could be. If a task completes with more than one exception (this is normal for parallel code), only the first one is retained (this is normal for async code). There's also an edge case around OperationCanceledException handling. But this code is good enough for most cases.

Now you can use it like this:

public static ExecutionQueue _queue = new ExecutionQueue();

public async Task SendModuleDataToDSAsync(Module parameters)
{
  var tasks1 = new List<Task>();
  var tasks2 = new List<Task>();

  foreach (var setting in Module.param)
  {
    Task job1 = _queue.Run(() => SaveModule(setting));
    tasks1.Add(job1);
    Task job2 = _queue.Run(() => SaveModule(GetAdvancedData(setting)));
    tasks2.Add(job2);
  }

  await Task.WhenAll(tasks1);
  await Task.WhenAll(tasks2);
}

Answer 2

Here's a compact solution that has the least amount of moving parts but still guarantees FIFO ordering (unlike some of the suggested SemaphoreSlim solutions). There are two overloads for Enqueue so you can enqueue tasks with and without return values.

using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

public class TaskQueue
{
    private Task _previousTask = Task.CompletedTask;

    public Task Enqueue(Func<Task> asyncAction)
    {
        return Enqueue(async () => { 
            await asyncAction().ConfigureAwait(false);
            return true; 
        });
    }

    public async Task<T> Enqueue<T>(Func<Task<T>> asyncFunction)
    {
        var tcs = new TaskCompletionSource(TaskCreationOptions.RunContinuationsAsynchronously);
        // get predecessor and wait until it's done. Also atomically swap in our own completion task.
        await Interlocked.Exchange(ref _previousTask, tcs.Task).ConfigureAwait(false);
        try
        { 
            return await asyncFunction().ConfigureAwait(false); 
        }
        finally 
        { 
            tcs.SetResult(); 
        }
    }
}