Is it right to use a delegate as a callback after some asynchronous operation?

Question

For instance... if i have a method that performs some asynchronous operation and i want to notify/call some sort of callback once it's done, would i use delegate?

I can't seem to get my head round how that would work. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I was looking at something like....

public class ContentContext
{
        public delegate void SuccessCallback(Dictionary<String, String> content);

        public void DoSomeAsyncOpertaion(SuccessCallback successCallback)
        {
            //do something and then fire the callback
        }
}

But something about that smells funny. Still a beginner with this c# stuff so forgive my ignorance ;)

Cheers J

Answer 1

I think that's ok. You can also use the AsyncCallback Delegate.

Answer 2

It's ok but the callback will be called on the same thread as the asynchronous operation.

If this is an issue, get some informations about Threads in .Net, SynchronizationContext, BackgroundWorder...

Answer 3

That looks fine to me. Though you could save yourself the delegate declaration and just use Action<>

I believe the official pattern is to use IAsyncResult, so I'd recommend that if you were developing a frameowrk.