Can constructors be async?

Question

I have a project where I\'m trying to populate some data in a constructor:

public class ViewModel
{
    public ObservableCollection Data { get;          


        

Answer 1

Since it is not possible to make an async constructor, I use a static async method that returns a class instance created by a private constructor. This is not elegant but it works ok.

public class ViewModel       
{       
    public ObservableCollection Data { get; set; }       

    //static async method that behave like a constructor       
    async public static Task BuildViewModelAsync()  
    {       
        ObservableCollection tmpData = await GetDataTask();  
        return new ViewModel(tmpData);
    }       

    // private constructor called by the async method
    private ViewModel(ObservableCollection Data)
    {
        this.Data = Data;   
    }
}