How can I assign a name to a task in TPL

Question

I\'m going to use lots of tasks running on my application. Each bunch of tasks is running for some reason. I would like to name these tasks so when I watch the Parallel Tasks wi

Answer 1

You could relate any object with any object. Here is an extension for Task. It uses a WeakReference so the task can still be garbage collected when all references are out of scope.

Usage:

var myTask = new Task(...
myTask.Tag("The name here");
var nameOfTask = (string)myTask.Tag();

Extension class:

public static class TaskExtensions
{
    private static readonly Dictionary, object> TaskNames = new Dictionary, object>(); 

    public static void Tag(this Task pTask, object pTag)
    {
        if (pTask == null) return;
        var weakReference = ContainsTask(pTask);
        if (weakReference == null)
        {
            weakReference = new WeakReference(pTask);
        }
        TaskNames[weakReference] = pTag;
    }

    public static object Tag(this Task pTask)
    {
        var weakReference = ContainsTask(pTask);
        if (weakReference == null) return null;
        return TaskNames[weakReference];
    }

    private static WeakReference ContainsTask(Task pTask)
    {
        foreach (var kvp in TaskNames.ToList())
        {
            var weakReference = kvp.Key;

            Task taskFromReference;
            if (!weakReference.TryGetTarget(out taskFromReference))
            {
                TaskNames.Remove(weakReference); //Keep the dictionary clean.
                continue;
            }

            if (pTask == taskFromReference)
            {
                return weakReference;
            }
        }
        return null;
    }
}