What is the correct way to dispose elements held inside a ThreadLocal<IDisposable>?

Question

When you use a ThreadLocal<T> and T implements IDisposable, how are you supposed to dispose of the members being held inside of the ThreadLocal?

According to ILSpy, the Dispose() and Dispose(bool) methods of ThreadLocal are

public void Dispose()
{
    this.Dispose(true);
    GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
}

protected virtual void Dispose(bool disposing)
{
    int currentInstanceIndex = this.m_currentInstanceIndex;
    if (currentInstanceIndex > -1 && Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref this.m_currentInstanceIndex, -1, currentInstanceIndex) == currentInstanceIndex)
    {
        ThreadLocal<T>.s_availableIndices.Push(currentInstanceIndex);
    }
    this.m_holder = null;
}

It does not appear that ThreadLocal attempts to call Dispose on its child members. I can't tell how to reference each thread it internally has allocated so I can take care of it.

---

I ran a test with the following code, the class is never disposed

static class Sandbox
{
    static void Main()
    {
        ThreadLocal<TestClass> test = new ThreadLocal<TestClass>();
        test.Value = new TestClass();

        test.Dispose();
        Console.Read();
    }
}

class TestClass : IDisposable
{
    public void Dispose()
    {
        Dispose(true);
        GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
    }
    protected void Dispose(bool Disposing)
    {
        Console.Write("I was disposed!");
    }
}

Answer 1

In .NET 4.5, the Values property was added to ThreadLocal<> to deal with the problem of manually managing the lifetime of ThreadLocal objects. It returns a list of all current instances bound to that ThreadLocal variable.

An example using a Parallel.For loop accessing a ThreadLocal database connection pool was presented in this MSDN article. The relevant code snippet is below.

var threadDbConn = new ThreadLocal<MyDbConnection>(() => MyDbConnection.Open(), true);
try
{
    Parallel.For(0, 10000, i =>
    {
        var inputData = threadDbConn.Value.GetData(i);
        ...
    });
}
finally
{
    foreach(var dbConn in threadDbConn.Values)
    {
        dbConn.Close();
    }
}

Answer 2

Normally when you don't explicitly dispose of a class that holds an unmanaged resource, the garbage collector will eventually run and dispose of it. For this to happen, the class has to have a finalizer that disposes of its resource. Your sample class doesn't have a finalizer.

Now, to dispose of a class that's held inside a ThreadLocal<T> where T is IDisposable you also have to do it yourself. ThreadLocal<T> is just a wrapper, it won't attempt to guess what's the correct behavior for its wrapped reference when it is itself disposed. The class could, e.g., survive its thread local storage.

Answer 3

MSDN reference states that the ThreadLocal values should be disposed by the thread using them once its done. However in some instances such as event threading using a thread pool A thread may use the value and go off to do something else and then come back to the value N number of times.

Specific example is where I want an Entity Framework DBContext to persist across the lifespan of a series of service bus worker threads.

I've written up the following class which I use in these instances: Either DisposeThreadCompletedValues can be called manually every so often by another thread or the internal monitor thread can be activated

Hopefully this helps?

using System.Threading;
public class DisposableThreadLocal<T> : IDisposable
    where T : IDisposable
{
    public DisposableThreadLocal(Func<T> _ValueFactory)
    {
        Initialize(_ValueFactory, false, 1);
    }
    public DisposableThreadLocal(Func<T> _ValueFactory, bool CreateLocalWatcherThread, int _CheckEverySeconds)
    {
        Initialize(_ValueFactory, CreateLocalWatcherThread, _CheckEverySeconds);
    }

    private void Initialize(Func<T> _ValueFactory, bool CreateLocalWatcherThread, int _CheckEverySeconds)
    {
        m_ValueFactory = _ValueFactory;
        m_CheckEverySeconds = _CheckEverySeconds * 1000;
        if (CreateLocalWatcherThread)
        {
            System.Threading.ThreadStart WatcherThreadStart;
            WatcherThreadStart = new ThreadStart(InternalMonitor);
            WatcherThread = new Thread(WatcherThreadStart);
            WatcherThread.Start();
        }
    }

    private object SyncRoot = new object();

    private Func<T> m_ValueFactory;
    public Func<T> ValueFactory
    {
        get
        {
            return m_ValueFactory;
        }
    }

    private Dictionary<Thread, T> m_InternalDict = new Dictionary<Thread, T>();
    private Dictionary<Thread, T> InternalDict
    {
        get
        {
            return m_InternalDict;
        }
    }

    public T Value
    {
        get
        {
            T Result;
            lock(SyncRoot)
            {
                if (!InternalDict.TryGetValue(Thread.CurrentThread,out Result))
                {
                    Result = ValueFactory.Invoke();
                    InternalDict.Add(Thread.CurrentThread, Result);
                }
            }
            return Result;
        }
        set
        {
            lock (SyncRoot)
            {
                if (InternalDict.ContainsKey(Thread.CurrentThread))
                {
                    InternalDict[Thread.CurrentThread] = value;
                }
                else
                {
                    InternalDict.Add(Thread.CurrentThread, value);
                }
            }
        }
    }

    public bool IsValueCreated
    {
        get
        {
            lock (SyncRoot)
            {
                return InternalDict.ContainsKey(Thread.CurrentThread);
            }
        }
    }

    public void DisposeThreadCompletedValues()
    {
        lock (SyncRoot)
        {
            List<Thread> CompletedThreads;
            CompletedThreads = new List<Thread>();
            foreach (Thread ThreadInstance in InternalDict.Keys)
            {
                if (!ThreadInstance.IsAlive)
                {
                    CompletedThreads.Add(ThreadInstance);
                }
            }
            foreach (Thread ThreadInstance in CompletedThreads)
            {
                InternalDict[ThreadInstance].Dispose();
                InternalDict.Remove(ThreadInstance);
            }
        }
    }

    private int m_CheckEverySeconds;
    private int CheckEverySeconds
    {
        get
        {
            return m_CheckEverySeconds;
        }
    }

    private Thread WatcherThread;

    private void InternalMonitor()
    {
        while (!IsDisposed)
        {
            System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(CheckEverySeconds);
            DisposeThreadCompletedValues();
        }
    }

    private bool IsDisposed = false;
    public void Dispose()
    {
        if (!IsDisposed)
        {
            IsDisposed = true;
            DoDispose();
        }
    }
    private void DoDispose()
    {
        if (WatcherThread != null)
        {
            WatcherThread.Abort();
        }
        //InternalDict.Values.ToList().ForEach(Value => Value.Dispose());
        foreach (T Value in InternalDict.Values)
        {
            Value.Dispose();
        }
        InternalDict.Clear();
        m_InternalDict = null;
        m_ValueFactory = null;
        GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
    }
}

Answer 4

How is the ThreadLocal.Dispose method itself getting called? I would expect that it would most likely be within something like a "using" block. I would suggest that one wrap the "using" block for the ThreadLocal with a "using" block for the resource that's going to be stored there.

Answer 5

I had a look at the code in ThreadLocal<T> to see what the current Dispose is doing and it appears to be a lot of voodoo. Obviously disposing of thread-related stuff.

But it doesn't dispose of the values if T itself is disposable.

Now, I have a solution - a ThreadLocalDisposables<T> class, but before I give the full definition it's worth thinking about what should happen if you wrote this code:

var tl = new ThreadLocalDisposables<IExpensiveDisposableResource>();
tl.Value = myEdr1;
tl.Value = myEdr2;
tl.Dispose();

Should both myEdr1 & myEdr2 both be disposed? Or just myEdr2? Or should myEdr1 be disposed when myEdr2 was assigned?

It's not clear to me what the semantics should be.

It is clear to me, however, that if I wrote this code:

var tl = new ThreadLocalDisposables<IExpensiveDisposableResource>(
    () => new ExpensiveDisposableResource());
tl.Value.DoSomething();
tl.Dispose();

Then I would expect that the resource created by the factory for each thread should be disposed of.

So I'm not going to allow the direct assignment of the disposable value for ThreadLocalDisposables and only allow the factory constructor.

Here's ThreadLocalDisposables:

public class ThreadLocalDisposables<T> : IDisposable
    where T : IDisposable
{
    private ThreadLocal<T> _threadLocal = null;
    private ConcurrentBag<T> _values = new ConcurrentBag<T>();

    public ThreadLocalDisposables(Func<T> valueFactory)
    {
        _threadLocal = new ThreadLocal<T>(() =>
        {
            var value = valueFactory();
            _values.Add(value);
            return value;
        });
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        _threadLocal.Dispose();
        Array.ForEach(_values.ToArray(), t => t.Dispose());
    }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return _threadLocal.ToString();
    }

    public bool IsValueCreated
    {
        get { return _threadLocal.IsValueCreated; }
    }

    public T Value
    {
        get { return _threadLocal.Value; }
    }
}

Does this help?

Answer 6

This is related to ThreadLocal<> and memory leak

My guess is because there is no IDisposable constraint on T, it is assumed that the user of ThreadLocal<T> will dispose of the local object, when appropriate.