The Nito.AsyncEx library includes many types and extension methods. To avoid conflicts, all of these types are defined in the Nito.AsyncEx namespace.

Asynchronous Coordination Primitives

There is a whole suite of async-ready coordination primitives. Cancellation is supported for all asynchronous operations that change state.

Most people just need AsyncLock, but Nito.AsyncEx also includes AsyncManualResetEvent, AsyncAutoResetEvent, AsyncConditionVariable, AsyncMonitor, AsyncSemaphore, AsyncCountdownEvent, AsyncBarrier, and AsyncReaderWriterLock.

Asynchronous and Concurrent Collections

AsyncProducerConsumerQueue is an async-ready producer/consumer queue that works on all platforms.

AsyncCollection is an async-compatible wrapper around IProducerConsumerCollection, in the same way that BlockingCollection is a blocking wrapper around IProducerConsumerCollection.

You can also use ProducerProgress to send IProgress updates to a producer/consumer collection.

Utility Types and Methods

The AsyncLazy class provides support for asynchronous lazy initialization.

You can use IEnumerable<Task<T>>.OrderByCompletion to order tasks by when they complete.

The AsyncContext class and the related AsyncContextThread class provide contexts for asynchronous operations for situations where such a context is lacking (Console applications and Win32 services). Note that due to security restrictions, AsyncContext and AsyncContextThread will not work on Silverlight or Windows Phone platforms.

CancellationTokenHelpers provides some static methods and constants for working with CancellationTokens.

DeferralManager simplifies the writing of "command-style" events that provide a GetDeferral method.

NotifyTaskCompletion is a data-binding-friendly wrapper for a Task, providing property-change notifications when the task completes.

Interop

TaskCompletionSource is a non-generic version of the built-in TaskCompletionSource<TResult>.

The AsyncFactory classes interoperate between Task-based Asynchronous Programming (async) and the Asynchronous Programming Model (IAsyncResult). AsyncFactory<T> can also create wrapper tasks for most events.

TaskCompletionSourceExtensions includes TryCompleteFromEventArgs, which helps interoperate between Task-based Asynchronous Programming (async) and Event-based Asynchronous Programming (*Completed).

Miscellaneous

TaskConstants provides static constant Task<TResult> values that are useful when taking advantage of the async fast path.

You can respond to task progress updates by using one of the implementations of IProgress: PropertyProgress, ObserverProgress, ProducerProgress, or DataflowProgress.

Extension Methods

CancellationToken.AsTask will create a task that is canceled when a CancellationToken is canceled.

TaskCompletionSourceExtensions has several extension methods for TaskCompletionSource, including propagating results from a completed Task or AsyncCompletedEventArgs, and for completing the source forcing background continuations.

Extension methods for the Task type include ordering tasks by completion and waiting while unwrapping exceptions (or without observing exceptions).

TaskFactoryExtensions adds Run overloads to task factories.

Dataflow Support

There is currently only one Dataflow block in the library: FuncBlock, which allows an async function to provide data to a dataflow mesh with full cooperative cancellation and error propagation.

Low-Level Building Blocks

ExceptionHelpers.PrepareForRethrow will preserve the stack trace when rethrowing any exception.

For dealing with SynchronizationContext directly, the library provides CurrentOrDefault and SynchronizationContextSwitcher.