Cleanest way to write retry logic?
You should try Polly. It's a .NET library written by me that allows developers to express transient exception handling policies such as Retry, Retry Forever, Wait and Retry or Circuit Breaker in a fluent manner.
Example
Policy
.Handle<SqlException>(ex => ex.Number == 1205)
.Or<ArgumentException>(ex => ex.ParamName == "example")
.WaitAndRetry(3, _ => TimeSpan.FromSeconds(3))
.Execute(DoSomething);
Blanket catch statements that simply retry the same call can be dangerous if used as a general exception handling mechanism. Having said that, here's a lambda-based retry wrapper that you can use with any method. I chose to factor the number of retries and the retry timeout out as parameters for a bit more flexibility:
public static class Retry
{
public static void Do(
Action action,
TimeSpan retryInterval,
int maxAttemptCount = 3)
{
Do<object>(() =>
{
action();
return null;
}, retryInterval, maxAttemptCount);
}
public static T Do<T>(
Func<T> action,
TimeSpan retryInterval,
int maxAttemptCount = 3)
{
var exceptions = new List<Exception>();
for (int attempted = 0; attempted < maxAttemptCount; attempted++)
{
try
{
if (attempted > 0)
{
Thread.Sleep(retryInterval);
}
return action();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
exceptions.Add(ex);
}
}
throw new AggregateException(exceptions);
}
}
You can now use this utility method to perform retry logic:
Retry.Do(() => SomeFunctionThatCanFail(), TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1));
or:
Retry.Do(SomeFunctionThatCanFail, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1));
or:
int result = Retry.Do(SomeFunctionWhichReturnsInt, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1), 4);
Or you could even make an async
overload.