autofac and multithreading - multithreading

when doing parallel/multithreading, if there are dependencies that are not thread safe, what kind of instance method can be used with autofac to get an instance per thread? from what I know, autofac is the kind of DI container for certain framework like asp.net/mvc but for the rest of the app type like windows service, it does not have any support. in my scenario, i am doing multithreading for a windows service that also hosting a web api service. what kind of registration can be used so that it will work for web api instanceperhttprequest and instanceperlifetimescope. two separate container?
EDIt:
using this parallel extension method here:
public static Task ForEachAsync<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source, int dop, Func<T, Task> body)
{
return Task.WhenAll(
from partition in Partitioner.Create(source).GetPartitions(dop)
select Task.Run(async delegate
{
using (partition)
{
while (partition.MoveNext())
{
await body(partition.Current);
}
}
}));
}
so the body will be use to do the work. DI will need to be inside of the body func.

It doesn't matter what kind of application you run; the pattern is always the same. You should resolve one object graph per request. In a web application, a request means a web request, in a windows service, a request is usually a timer pulse.
So in a windows service, each 'pulse' you start a new lifetime scope, and within this scope you resolve your root object and call it.
If however, you process items in parallel within a single request, you should see each processed item as a request of its own. So that means that on each thread you should start a new lifetime scope and resolve a sub object graph from that scope and execute that. Prevent passing services that are resolved from your container, from thread to thread. This scatters the knowledge of what is thread-safe, and what isn't throughout the application, instead of keeping that knowledge centralized in the startup path of your application where you compose your object graphs (the composition root).
Take a look at this article about working with dependency injection in multi-threaded applications. It's written for a different DI library, but you'll find most of the advice generically applicable to all DI libraries.

Related

ASP.NET Core Scoped DbContext (EntityFramework) in Multithreading Environment

I read a lot about a scoped DbContext (EntityFramework) in a ASP.NET Core environment.
It makes sense to setup the DI framework with a scoped DbContext, due to have one DbContext per request.
Unfortunately this DbContext cannot be used in a Parallel.ForEach loop (or any kind of thread). The DbContext itself is not threadsafe! So I have to be careful using any kind of Task/Thread.
But sometimes its necessary (or useful) to implements something in a Parallel.ForEach (or something like this).
But how can I be sure that my called functions in a Parallel.ForEach dont use any kind of DbContext? Or maybe one day I decide to use a DbContext in some class/functions which is called from a Task, but I dont not recognize it?
There must be a solution for this? Right now it seems that I cannot use the TPL at all (just to be safe) ... but this seems to be very strange.
Isn't there any better approach?
You would have to inject a IServiceProvider and create your own scope for each iteration.
A quick example would look like
Parallel.ForEach(values, value =>
{
using (var scope = _serviceProvider.CreateScope())
{
var context = scope.ServiceProvider.GetRequiredService<DbContext>();
//query context here
} // The context will be disposed off by the scope
});
Serviced acquired through the scope will also be scoped to it (when applicable)

Servicestack Multitenancy dynamic plugins

We are moving from an on premise-like application to a multi tenant cloud application.
for my web application we made a very simple interface based on IPlugin, to create a plugin architecture. (customers can have/install different plugins)
public interface IWebPlugin : IPlugin
{
string ContentBaseUrl { set; get; }
}
We have some plugins that would normally be loaded in on startup. Now i'm migrating the code to load at the beginning of a request (the Register function is called on request start), and scope everything inside this request.
It's not ideal but it would bring the least impact on the plugin system for now.
I could scope the Container by making an AppHost child container which would stick to the request:
Container IHasContainer.Container
{
get
{
if (HasStarted)
return ChildContainer;
return base.Container;
}
}
public Container ChildContainer
{
get { return HttpContext.Current.Items.GetOrAdd<Container>("ChildContainer", c => Container.CreateChildContainer()); }
}
problem case
Now im trying to make plugins work that actually add API services.
appHost.Routes.Add<GetTranslations>("/Localizations/translations", ApplyTo.Get);
But this service is unreachable (and not visible in metadata). How do i make it reachable?
I see you execute the following in ServiceController AfterInit. Re-executing this still wouldnt make it work.
//Copied from servicestack repo
public void AfterInit()
{
//Register any routes configured on Metadata.Routes
foreach (var restPath in appHost.RestPaths)
{
RegisterRestPath(restPath);
//Auto add Route Attributes so they're available in T.ToUrl() extension methods
restPath.RequestType
.AddAttributes(new RouteAttribute(restPath.Path, restPath.AllowedVerbs)
{
Priority = restPath.Priority,
Summary = restPath.Summary,
Notes = restPath.Notes,
});
}
//Sync the RestPaths collections
appHost.RestPaths.Clear();
appHost.RestPaths.AddRange(RestPathMap.Values.SelectMany(x => x));
appHost.Metadata.AfterInit();
}
solution directions
Is there a way i could override the route finding? like extending RestHandler.FindMatchingRestPath(httpMethod, pathInfo, out contentType);
Or could i restart the path compilation/caching? (would be enough for now that the service would be reachable tenant wide )
All configuration in ServiceStack should be contained within AppHost.Configure() and remain immutable thereafter. It's not ThreadSafe to modify ServiceStack's Static Configuration at runtime like trying to modify registered routes or Service Metadata which needs to be registered once at StartUp in AppHost.Configure().
It looks as though you'll need to re-architect your solution so all Routes are registered on Startup. If it helps Plugins can implement IPreInitPlugin and IPostInitPlugin interfaces to execute custom logic before and after Plugins are registered. They can also register a appHost.AfterInitCallbacks to register custom logic after ServiceStack's AppHost has been initialized.
Not sure if it's applicable but at runtime you can "hi-jack Requests" in ServiceStack by registering a RawHttpHandler or a PreRequestFilter, e.g:
appHost.RawHttpHandlers.Add(httpReq =>
MyShouldHandleThisRoute(httpReq.PathInfo)
? new CustomActionHandler((req, res) => {
//Handle Route
});
: null);
Simple answer seems to be, no. The framework wasn't build to be a run-time plugable system.
You will have to make this architecture yourself on top of ServiceStack.
Routing solution
To make it route to these run-time loaded services/routes it is needed to make your own implementation.
The ServiceStack.HttpHandlerFactory checks if a route exist (one that is registered on init). so here is where you will have to start extending. The method GetHandlerForPathInfo checks if it can find the (service)route and otherwise return a NotFoundHandler or StaticFileHandler.
My solution consists of the following code:
string contentType;
var restPath = RestHandler.FindMatchingRestPath(httpMethod, pathInfo, out contentType);
//Added part
if (restPath == null)
restPath = AppHost.Instance.FindPluginServiceForRoute(httpMethod, pathInfo);
//End added part
if (restPath != null)
return new RestHandler { RestPath = restPath, RequestName = restPath.RequestType.GetOperationName(), ResponseContentType = contentType };
technically speaking IAppHost.IServiceRoutes should be the one doing the routing. Probably in the future this will be extensible.
Resolving services
The second problem is resolving the services. After the route has been found and the right Message/Dto Type has been resolved. The IAppHost.ServiceController will attempt to find the right service and make it execute the message.
This class also has init functions which are called on startup to reflect all the services in servicestack. I didn't found a work around yet, but ill by working on it to make it possible in ServiceStack coming weeks.
Current version on nuget its not possible to make it work. I added some extensibility in servicestack to make it +- possible.
Ioc Solution out of the box
For ioc ServiceStack.Funq gives us a solution. Funq allows making child containers where you can register your ioc on. On resolve a child container will, if it can't resolve the interface, ask its parent to resolve it.
Container.CreateChildContainer()

Using HttpContext.Current in WebApi is dangerous because of async

My question is a bit related to this: WebApi equivalent for HttpContext.Items with Dependency Injection.
We want to inject a class using HttpContext.Current in WebApi area using Ninject.
My concern is, this could be very dangerous, as in WebApi (everything?) is async.
Please correct me if I am wrong in these points, this is what I investigated so far:
HttpContext.Current gets the current context by Thread (I looked into the implementation directly).
Using HttpContext.Current inside of async Task is not possible, because it can run on another Thread.
WebApi uses IHttpController with method Task<HttpResponseMessage> ExecuteAsync => every request is async => you cannot use HttpContext.Current inside of action method. It could even happen, more Request are executed on the same thread by coicidence.
For creating controllers with injected stuff into constructors IHttpControllerActivator is used with sync method IHttpController Create. This is, where ninject creates Controller with all its dependencies.
If I am correct in all of these 4 points, using of HttpContext.Current inside of an action method or any layer below is very dangerous and can have unexpected results. I saw on StackOverflow lot of accepted answers suggesting exactly this. In my opinion this can work for a while, but will fail under load.
But when using DI to create a Controller and its dependencies, it is Ok, because this runs on one separated thread. I could get a value from the HttpContext in the constructor and it would be safe?. I wonder if each Controller is created on single thread for every request, as this could cause problem under heavy loads, where all threads from IIS could be consumed.
Just to explain why I want to inject HttpContext stuff:
one solution would be to get the request in controller action method and pass the needed value all the layers as param until its used somewhere deep in the code.
our wanted solution: all the layers between are not affected by this, and we can use the injected request somewhere deep in code (e.g. in some ConfigurationProvider which is dependent on URL)
Please give me your opinion if I am totally wrong or my suggestions are correct, as this theme seems to be very complicated.
HttpContext.Current gets the current context by Thread (I looked into the implementation directly).
It would be more correct to say that HttpContext is applied to a thread; or a thread "enters" the HttpContext.
Using HttpContext.Current inside of async Task is not possible, because it can run on another Thread.
Not at all; the default behavior of async/await will resume on an arbitrary thread, but that thread will enter the request context before resuming your async method.
The key to this is the SynchronizationContext. I have an MSDN article on the subject if you're not familiar with it. A SynchronizationContext defines a "context" for a platform, with the common ones being UI contexts (WPF, WinPhone, WinForms, etc), the thread pool context, and the ASP.NET request context.
The ASP.NET request context manages HttpContext.Current as well as a few other things such as culture and security. The UI contexts are all tightly associated with a single thread (the UI thread), but the ASP.NET request context is not tied to a specific thread. It will, however, only allow one thread in the request context at a time.
The other part of the solution is how async and await work. I have an async intro on my blog that describes their behavior. In summary, await by default will capture the current context (which is SynchronizationContext.Current unless it is null), and use that context to resume the async method. So, await is automatically capturing the ASP.NET SynchronizationContext and will resume the async method within that request context (thus preserving culture, security, and HttpContext.Current).
If you await ConfigureAwait(false), then you're explicitly telling await to not capture the context.
Note that ASP.NET did have to change its SynchronizationContext to work cleanly with async/await. You have to ensure that the application is compiled against .NET 4.5 and also explicitly targets 4.5 in its web.config; this is the default for new ASP.NET 4.5 projects but must be explicitly set if you upgraded an existing project from ASP.NET 4.0 or earlier.
You can ensure these settings are correct by executing your application against .NET 4.5 and observing SynchronizationContext.Current. If it is AspNetSynchronizationContext, then you're good; if it's LegacyAspNetSynchronizationContext, then the settings are wrong.
As long as the settings are correct (and you are using the ASP.NET 4.5 AspNetSynchronizationContext), then you can safely use HttpContext.Current after an await without worrying about it.
I am using a web api, which is using async/await methodology.
also using
1) HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath
2) System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.ServerVariables
This was working fine for a good amount of time which broke suddenly for no code change.
Spending a lot of time by reverting back to previous old versions, found the missing key causes the issue.
< httpRuntime targetFramework="4.5.2" /> under system.web
I am not an expert technically. But I suggest to add the key to your web config and give it a GO.
I found very good article describing exactly this problem: http://byterot.blogspot.cz/2012/04/aspnet-web-api-series-part-3-async-deep.html?m=1
author investigated deeply, how the ExecuteAsync method is called in the WebApi framework and came to this conclusion:
ASP.NET Web API actions (and all the pipeline methods) will be called asynchronously only if you return a Task or Task<T>. This might sound obvious but none of the pipeline methods with Async suffix will run in their own threads. Using blanket Async could be a misnomer. [UPDATE: ASP.NET team indeed have confirmed that the Async is used to denote methods that return Task and can run asynchronously but do not have to]
What I understood from the article is, that the Action methods are called synchronously, but it is the caller decision.
I created a small test app for this purpose, something like this:
public class ValuesController : ApiController
{
public object Get(string clientId, string specialValue)
{
HttpRequest staticContext = HttpContext.Current.Request;
string staticUrl = staticContext.Url.ToString();
HttpRequestMessage dynamicContext = Request;
string dynamicUrl = dynamicContext.RequestUri.ToString();
return new {one = staticUrl, two = dynamicUrl};
}
}
and one Async version returning async Task<object>
I tried to do a little DOS attack on it with jquery and could not determine any issue until I used await Task.Delay(1).ConfigureAwait(false);, which is obvious it would fail.
What I took from the article is, that the problem is very complicated and Thread switch can happen when using async action method, so it is definetly NOT a good idea to use HttpContext.Current anywhere in the code called from the action methods. But as the controller is created synchronously, using HttpContext.Current in the constructor and as well in dependency injection is OK.
When somebody has another explanation to this problem please correct me as this problem is very complicated an I am still not 100% convinced.
diclaimer:
I ignore for now the problem of self-hosted Web-Api withoud IIS, where HttpContext.Current would not work probably anyway. We now rely on IIS.

Uploading photos using Grails Services

I would like to ask, What would be the most suitable scope for my upload photo service in Grails ? I created this PhotoService in my Grails 2.3.4 web app, all it does is to get the request.getFile("myfile") and perform the necessary steps to save it on the hard drive whenever a user wants to upload an image. To illustrate what it looks like, I give a skeleton of these classes.
PhotoPageController {
def photoService
def upload(){
...
photoService.upload(request.getFile("myfile"))
...
}
}
PhotoService{
static scope="request"
def upload(def myFile){
...
// I do a bunch of task to save the photo
...
}
}
The code above isn't the exact code, I just wanted to show the flow. But my question is:
Question:
I couldn't find the exact definition of these different grails scopes, they have a one liner explanation but I couldn't figure out if request scope means for every request to the controller one bean is injected, or each time a request comes to upload action of the controller ?
Thoughts:
Basically since many users might upload at the same time, It's not a good idea to use singleton scope, so my options would be prototype or request I guess. So which one of them works well and also which one only gets created when the PhotoService is accessed only ?
I'm trying to minimize the number of services being injected into the application context and stays as long as the web app is alive, basically I want the service instance to die or get garbage collect at some point during the web app life time rather than hanging around in the memory while there is no use for it. I was thinking about making it session scope so when the user's session is terminated the service is cleaned up too, but in some cases a user might not want to upload any photo and the service gets created for no reason.
P.S: If I move the "def photoService" within the upload(), does that make it only get injected when the request to upload is invoked ? I assume that might throw exception because there would be a delay until Spring injects the service and then the ref to def photoService would be n
I figured out that Singleton scope would be fine since I'm not maintaining the state for each request/user. Only if the service is supposed to maintain state, then we can go ahead and use prototype or other suitable scopes. Using prototype is safer if you think the singleton might cause unexpected behavior but that is left to testing.

Can ACS Service Namespace creation be automated?

First, let me state my real problem: I've got code that makes calls to the ACS Management service, and I'd like my integration tests to be able to be run concurrently without each test run clobbering the others. That is, since multiple people / build servers might end up running these tests concurrently, if they're all using the same ACS service namespace, concurrency issues arise.
My thinking is the simplest means of achieving this would be to generate new, unique ACS service namespaces for each test runner -- but as far as I can tell, there's no automated way of creating new service namespaces (or management client keys). Am I wrong? Is there another way of going about this?
An automated method of creating new service namespaces would be extraordinarily helpful.
You are correct. That's not possible today. Maybe you can describe your scenario in more detail and there might be some alternative solutions to avoid having to recreate the namespace?
Technically it should be possible, since the Management Portal is a Silverlight application accessing a WCF RIA Service.
If you dig deep enough you'll find some useful information:
This is the Silverlight XAP for the management of Windows Azure AppFabric: https://appfabricportal.windows.azure.com/ClientBin/Microsoft.AppFabric.WebConsole.4.1.3.xap
This is the service being used when listing/creating/... namespaces etc..: https://appfabricportal.windows.azure.com/Services/Microsoft-AppFabric-Web-Services-AppFabricDomainService.svc?wsdl
And this is a piece of the DomainContext:
public sealed class AppFabricDomainContext : DomainContext
{
public AppFabricDomainContext(Uri serviceUri)
: this((DomainClient) new WebDomainClient<AppFabricDomainContext.IAppFabricDomainServiceContract>(serviceUri, true))
{
}
...
public InvokeOperation CreateServiceNamespace(IEnumerable<string> serviceNames, string parentProjectKey, string serviceNamespace, IEnumerable<string> packageKeys, string regionKey, Action<InvokeOperation> callback, object userState)
{
Dictionary<string, object> dictionary = new Dictionary<string, object>();
dictionary.Add("serviceNames", (object) serviceNames);
dictionary.Add("parentProjectKey", (object) parentProjectKey);
dictionary.Add("serviceNamespace", (object) serviceNamespace);
dictionary.Add("packageKeys", (object) packageKeys);
dictionary.Add("regionKey", (object) regionKey);
this.ValidateMethod("CreateServiceNamespace", (IDictionary<string, object>) dictionary);
return this.InvokeOperation("CreateServiceNamespace", typeof (void), (IDictionary<string, object>) dictionary, true, callback, userState);
}
}
Finding this info was the easy part, getting it to work... that's something else. Take the authentication part for example, you'll need to authenticate with Windows Live and use those credentials when calling the WCF RIA Service.
Good luck!

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