Question

There are times that a method needs to be run several times until it validates. In my case there are expressions like bar.Name.Equals("John Doe") which I want to run and run until this expression validates.

Something like:

bool succeeded = TryUntillOk(bar.Name.Equals("John Doe"), 15, 100);

where TryUntillOk would be a method that runs this expression 15 times with a sleep of 100ms between each call.

I read this excellent list of answers to similar issues but in my case there is no standar delegate that this TryUntillOk method would accept.

The title of the question is not constructive. Feel free to edit it 🙂

Answer 1

You are probably looking for something like this:

bool TryRepeatedly(Func<bool> condition, int maxRepeats, TimeSpan repeatInterval)
{
    for (var i = 0; i < maxRepeats; ++i)
    {
        if (condition()) return true;
        Thread.Sleep(repeatInterval); // or your choice of waiting mechanism
    }
    return false;
}

Which would be invoked as follows:

bool succeeded = TryRepeatedly(() => bar.Name.Equals("John Doe"),
                               15,
                               TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(100));

The only interesting part here is that you specify the condition as a Func<bool>, which is a delegate to a method that takes no parameters and returns a boolean. Lambda expression syntax allows you to trivially construct such a delegate at the call site.