Question

I am about to use a BlockingCollection like below and just wanted to check that it was suitable for thread safety etc. Was wondering if I needed a CancellationTokenSource for anything.

Thanks

public class MyApp
{
  private BlockingCollection<int> blockingCollection;

  public void Start()
  {
     blockingCollection= new BlockingCollection<int>();
     var task = Task.Factory.StartNew(ProcessData);
  }

  public void Add(int value)
  {
    blockingCollection.Add(value); //This is a thread that receives input
  }

  private void ProcessData()
  {
    foreach(var item in blockingCollection.GetConsumingEnumerable())
    {  
      ...
    }
  }

  public void Finish()
  {
    blockingCollection.CompleteAdding();
  }
}

Answer 1

Obviously, you may use cancellation token to support graceful cancellation pattern in your code:

  private readonly CancellationTokenSource cts = new CancellationTokenSource();

  public void Start()
  {
     blockingCollection= new BlockingCollection<int>();
     var task = Task.Factory.StartNew(ProcessData, cts.Token);
  }

  private void ProcessData()
  {
    foreach(var item in blockingCollection.GetConsumingEnumerable(cts.Token))
    {  
        cts.Token.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();

        // ...
    }
  }

  public void Cancel()
  {
      cts.Cancel();
  }