Thread-safe List<T> property

Question

If you are targetting .Net 4 there are a few options in System.Collections.Concurrent Namespace

You could use ConcurrentBag<T> in this case instead of List<T>

Even as it got the most votes, one usually can't take System.Collections.Concurrent.ConcurrentBag<T> as a thread-safe replacement for System.Collections.Generic.List<T> as it is (Radek Stromský already pointed it out) not ordered.

But there is a class called System.Collections.Generic.SynchronizedCollection<T> that is already since .NET 3.0 part of the framework, but it is that well hidden in a location where one does not expect it that it is little known and probably you have never ever stumbled over it (at least I never did).

SynchronizedCollection<T> is compiled into assembly System.ServiceModel.dll (which is part of the client profile but not of the portable class library).

I would think making a sample ThreadSafeList class would be easy:

public class ThreadSafeList<T> : IList<T>
{
    protected List<T> _internalList = new List<T>();

    // Other Elements of IList implementation

    public IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator()
    {
        return Clone().GetEnumerator();
    }

    System.Collections.IEnumerator System.Collections.IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
    {
        return Clone().GetEnumerator();
    }

    protected static object _lock = new object();

    public List<T> Clone()
    {
        List<T> newList = new List<T>();

        lock (_lock)
        {
            _internalList.ForEach(x => newList.Add(x));
        }

        return newList;
    }
}

You simply clone the list before requesting an enumerator, and thus any enumeration is working off a copy that can't be modified while running.

Even accepted answer is ConcurrentBag, I don't think it's real replacement of list in all cases, as Radek's comment to the answer says: "ConcurrentBag is unordered collection, so unlike List it does not guarantee ordering. Also you cannot access items by index".

So if you use .NET 4.0 or higher, a workaround could be to use ConcurrentDictionary with integer TKey as array index and TValue as array value. This is recommended way of replacing list in Pluralsight's C# Concurrent Collections course. ConcurrentDictionary solves both problems mentioned above: index accessing and ordering (we can not rely on ordering as it's hash table under the hood, but current .NET implementation saves order of elements adding).

C#'s ArrayList class has a Synchronized method.

var threadSafeArrayList = ArrayList.Synchronized(new ArrayList());

This returns a thread safe wrapper around any instance of IList. All operations need to be performed through the wrapper to ensure thread safety.

If you look at the source code for List of T (https://referencesource.microsoft.com/#mscorlib/system/collections/generic/list.cs,c66df6f36c131877) you will notice there is a class there (which is of course internal - why, Microsoft, why?!?!) called SynchronizedList of T. I am copy pasting the code here:

   [Serializable()]
    internal class SynchronizedList : IList<T> {
        private List<T> _list;
        private Object _root;

        internal SynchronizedList(List<T> list) {
            _list = list;
            _root = ((System.Collections.ICollection)list).SyncRoot;
        }

        public int Count {
            get {
                lock (_root) { 
                    return _list.Count; 
                }
            }
        }

        public bool IsReadOnly {
            get {
                return ((ICollection<T>)_list).IsReadOnly;
            }
        }

        public void Add(T item) {
            lock (_root) { 
                _list.Add(item); 
            }
        }

        public void Clear() {
            lock (_root) { 
                _list.Clear(); 
            }
        }

        public bool Contains(T item) {
            lock (_root) { 
                return _list.Contains(item);
            }
        }

        public void CopyTo(T[] array, int arrayIndex) {
            lock (_root) { 
                _list.CopyTo(array, arrayIndex);
            }
        }

        public bool Remove(T item) {
            lock (_root) { 
                return _list.Remove(item);
            }
        }

        System.Collections.IEnumerator System.Collections.IEnumerable.GetEnumerator() {
            lock (_root) { 
                return _list.GetEnumerator();
            }
        }

        IEnumerator<T> IEnumerable<T>.GetEnumerator() {
            lock (_root) { 
                return ((IEnumerable<T>)_list).GetEnumerator();
            }
        }

        public T this[int index] {
            get {
                lock(_root) {
                    return _list[index];
                }
            }
            set {
                lock(_root) {
                    _list[index] = value;
                }
            }
        }

        public int IndexOf(T item) {
            lock (_root) {
                return _list.IndexOf(item);
            }
        }

        public void Insert(int index, T item) {
            lock (_root) {
                _list.Insert(index, item);
            }
        }

        public void RemoveAt(int index) {
            lock (_root) {
                _list.RemoveAt(index);
            }
        }
    }

Personally I think they knew a better implementation using SemaphoreSlim could be created, but didn't get to it.