Where am I supposed to start persistent background tasks in ASP.NET Core?

Question

In my web application (ASP.NET Core), I want to run a job in the background that is listening to a remote server, calculating some results and pushing it to the client on Pusher (a websocket).

I'm not sure where I'm supposed to start this task. Currently I start it at the end of

    public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env)

in Startup.cs

but I think there is something wrong about that, it doesn't make sense to start background jobs in a method called "Configure". I was expecting to find a Start method somewhere

Also, when I try to use EF Core to generate initial database migration file, it actually executes that method and starts my tasks.. which clearly doesn't make any sense:

dotnet ef migrations add InitialCreate

running that from console creates migration code which will be used to create the database on SQL Server based on my data models.

Why isn't there a method where I can start some a Task? I don't want this to be on a separate process, it really doesn't need its own process and it is essentially a part of the web server because it does communicate with the client (browser) via a websocket, so it makes sense to run it as part of the web server.

Answer 1

I believe you're looking for this

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cesardelatorre/2017/11/18/implementing-background-tasks-in-microservices-with-ihostedservice-and-the-backgroundservice-class-net-core-2-x/

And i did a 2 hour self-proclaimed-award-winning hackathon against myself to learn abit of that.

https://github.com/nixxholas/nautilus

You can refer the injections here and implement the abstracts from there too.

Many MVC projects are not really required to operate persistent background tasks. This is why you don't see them baked into a fresh new project via the template. It's better to provide developers an interface to tap on and go ahead with it.

Also, with regards to opening that socket connection for such background tasks, I have yet to establish a solution for that. As far as I know/did, I was only able to broadcast payload to clients that are connected to my own socketmanager so you'll have to look elsewhere for that. I'll definitely beep if there is anything regarding websockets in an IHostedService.

Ok anyway here's what happens.

Put this somewhere in your project, its more of an interface for you to overload with to create your own task

/// Copyright(c) .NET Foundation.Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
    /// <summary>
    /// Base class for implementing a long running <see cref="IHostedService"/>.
    /// </summary>
    public abstract class BackgroundService : IHostedService, IDisposable
    {
        protected readonly IServiceScopeFactory _scopeFactory;
        private Task _executingTask;
        private readonly CancellationTokenSource _stoppingCts =
                                                       new CancellationTokenSource();

        public BackgroundService(IServiceScopeFactory scopeFactory) {
            _scopeFactory = scopeFactory;
        }

        protected abstract Task ExecuteAsync(CancellationToken stoppingToken);

        public virtual Task StartAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
        {
            // Store the task we're executing
            _executingTask = ExecuteAsync(_stoppingCts.Token);

            // If the task is completed then return it,
            // this will bubble cancellation and failure to the caller
            if (_executingTask.IsCompleted)
            {
                return _executingTask;
            }

            // Otherwise it's running
            return Task.CompletedTask;
        }

        public virtual async Task StopAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
        {
            // Stop called without start
            if (_executingTask == null)
            {
                return;
            }

            try
            {
                // Signal cancellation to the executing method
                _stoppingCts.Cancel();
            }
            finally
            {
                // Wait until the task completes or the stop token triggers
                await Task.WhenAny(_executingTask, Task.Delay(Timeout.Infinite,
                                                              cancellationToken));
            }
        }

        public virtual void Dispose()
        {
            _stoppingCts.Cancel();
        }
    }

Here's how you can actually use it

public class IncomingEthTxService : BackgroundService
    {
        public IncomingEthTxService(IServiceScopeFactory scopeFactory) : base(scopeFactory)
        {
        }

        protected override async Task ExecuteAsync(CancellationToken stoppingToken)
        {

            while (!stoppingToken.IsCancellationRequested)
            {
                using (var scope = _scopeFactory.CreateScope())
                {
                    var dbContext = scope.ServiceProvider.GetRequiredService<NautilusDbContext>();

                    Console.WriteLine("[IncomingEthTxService] Service is Running");

                    // Run something

                    await Task.Delay(5, stoppingToken);
                }
            }
        }
    }

If you noticed, there's a bonus there. You'll have to use a servicescope in order to access db operations because its a singleton.

Inject your service in

// Background Service Dependencies
            services.AddSingleton<IHostedService, IncomingEthTxService>();