Question

I’m using property like this in multithreading application (WCF service hosted in windows managed service):

private object lockObj = new object();
private string val = string.Empty;

[DataMember]
public string Value
{
    get 
    {
        lock(lockObj)
        {
            return val;
        }
    }
    set 
    {
        lock(lockObj)
        {
            val = value;
        }
    }
}

Sending via WCF service fails until I remove the locks, then it works. (don’t have current exception, service fails without loging to my tracking)

Is there possibility to solve it with having locks, or I must to convert it to some reduced object without locks?

Answer 1

so as I get no answer, I write my own solution.

as I write in comments, type of Value property is List<string> (later changed to List<SomeMyObject>) and when I remove locks, I got exceptions because of collection is modified. Then I make a method, which makes a DeepCopy of my list and what I send through WCF is Skelet version (from all inner objects I take just Ids) of previous object:

    public Skelet ToSkelet()
    {
        var result = new Skelet
        {
            Waiting = Waiting.DeepClone().ConvertAll(x => x.Id),
            Open = Open.DeepClone().ConvertAll(x => x.Id),
            Finished = Finished //this one is int
        };

        return result;
    }

on SO found DeepClone method:

    public static T DeepClone<T>(this T obj)
    {
        using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
        {
            var formatter = new BinaryFormatter();
            formatter.Serialize(ms, obj);
            ms.Position = 0;

            return (T)formatter.Deserialize(ms);
        }
    }