CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#silverlightwindows-phone-7
AwkwardCoder
AwkwardCoder

Reputation: 25641

Releasing underlying Stream returned by Application.GetResourceStream on WP7

When accessing a resource using Application.GetResourceStream it returns an instance of the class StreamResourceInfo, this class does not implement IDisposable.

Should I close\dispose the underlying stream exposed by StreamResourceInfo when I've finished processing the stream on a WP7 device - I don't want to know about Using or the Dispose pattern.

An example would be using the method to access a ZIP file which is contained with the ZAP package and once I have unzipped the file I don't need the Stream instance anymore.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 919

Answers (3)

keyboardP
keyboardP

Reputation: 69372

Using automatically calls the dispose method once the end of the using scope is reached. So, you could do something like this. Once the end of the scope is reached, your stream will be removed.

 using (var stream = Application.GetResourceStream(new Uri("myResource.zip", UriKind.Relative)).Stream)
 {
       //stream code
 }

EDIT - Moving responses from comments to here: The StreamResourceInfo isn't responsible for the closing/disposing of the Stream. Unless you pass that Stream to something else (e.g. a StreamReader), then it's your job to close the stream. Found a link that may be of interest which pretty much goes along with that.

Upvotes: 0

Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey

Reputation: 180858

The code example provided here does not make use of using, Close() or Dispose().

Since the documentation for StreamResourceInfo doesn't mention Close() or Dispose() (and StreamResourceInfo does not actually inherit from Stream or anything else that might implement these methods), I think it's safe to just let the object go out of scope and garbage collect naturally.

I suspect that the StreamResourceInfo class has a finalizer that calls Dispose() on the underlying Stream object during garbage collection, but I don't have a copy of Reflector available to me at the moment to verify that. The IDisposable pattern is quite robust in that regard.

However, if you still feel uncomfortable with that level of uncertainty, you can always call Close() on the Stream object.

Upvotes: 3

Varun K
Varun K

Reputation: 3638

I don't know about Windows 7 phone specifically, but the standard practice is to dispose the object and it does automatically close the stream if it is opened. Disposing should be the final operation on an object whereas close indicates possibility of reopening. So you should go for dispose in my opinion.

Upvotes: 0

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