Lazy Initializer to Defer Expensive Object Creation

.NET 2010 comes with lots of new features. Some relate to technology while others relate to language enhancements. The huge class library that is there with .NET Framework is also enriched with new classes. In .NET 4.0, there is a new set of classes which introduces a new concept called Lazy initializes. In this post, I am going to discuss how simply you can use Lazy initialize to defer the execution of a method or property for values to whenever it is required.

Introduction

It is true that we often use Lazy initializer in our code by restricting the load of objects using Properties. Thus unless the property is called from the code, the object will not be created. A sample of it is:

private List<string> lazystrings = null;
        public List<string> LazyStrings
        {
            get
            {
                if (this.lazystrings == null)
                    this.lazystrings = this.GetLazyStrings();
                return this.lazystrings;
            }
        }

        private List<string> GetLazyStrings()
        {
            List<string> lazystrings = new List<string>();
            for (int i = 0; i < 30; i++)
            {
                lazystrings.Add(string.Format("Item {0}", i));
            }
            return lazystrings;
        }

In this case, we have wrapped the loading of a List inside a property and hence the object will be loaded only when the object calls the property. This is a very common scenario of our daily programming needs.

Microsoft introduces a new technique called LazyInitializer that enables to do this in the same way as we do with the code above, but Microsoft recommends to use Lazy<t> instead because it is ThreadSafe. In this post, we will see how to implement Microsoft's Lazy initializers.

Lazy Initializers

Let's look at how you can use Lazy intializers in .NET 4.0.

There are 3 types in .NET 4.0 which support Lazy Initialization.

1. Lazy<t>: It is just a wrapper class that supports lazy initialization.
2. ThreadLocal<t>: It is the same as Lazy<t>, but the only difference is that it stores data on Thread Local basis.
3. LazyInitializer: Provides static implementation of Lazy initializer which eliminates the overhead of creation of Lazy objects. 

Let's start one by one.

Lazy

<t>Lazy<t> creates a thread safe lazy initialization of objects. In case of critical scenarios where large number of objects are to be created for large number of objects and each object by itself creates a lots of objects, for instance, say there are a large number of Customers and for each customer, there are large number of payments, if Customer is an entity and Payment is also an entity, Customer will contain an array of Payment objects. Thus, each entity requires a large number of database calls to ensure that the data is retrieved. This doesn't makes sense. Using Lazy class, you can eliminate this problem. 

Let us look at how to use it:

public class Customer
    {
        public string Name { get; set; }
        public Lazy<IList<Payment>> Payments
    {
            get
            {
                return new Lazy<IList<Payment>>(() => this.FetchPayments());
            }
        }

        private IList<Payment> FetchPayments()
        {
            List<Payment> payments = new List<Payment>();
            payments.Add(new Payment { BillNumber = 1, 
		BillDate = DateTime.Now, PaymentAmount = 200 });
            payments.Add(new Payment { BillNumber = 2, 
		BillDate = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-1), PaymentAmount = 540 });
            payments.Add(new Payment { BillNumber = 3, 
		BillDate = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-2), PaymentAmount = 700 });
            payments.Add(new Payment { BillNumber = 4, 
		BillDate = DateTime.Now, PaymentAmount = 500 });
            //Load all the payments here from database
            return payments;
        }

        public Payment GetPayment(int billno)
        {
            if (this.Orders.IsValueCreated)
            {
                var payments = this.Payments.Value;
                Payment p = payments.FirstOrDefault
			(pay => pay.BillNumber.Equals(billno));
                return p;
            }
            else
                throw new NotImplementedException("Object is not initialized");
        }
    }

    public class Payment
    {
        public int BillNumber {get;set;}
        public DateTime BillDate { get; set; }
        public double PaymentAmount { get; set; }
    }

Here, I have created a class called Payment which has a few properties. Each Customer has a list of Payments. You can see in the Customer class, I have created a Lazy. This will ensure that the list will be populated only when the Delegate passed to the constructor of Lazy object is called, and it will only be called when this.Payments.Value is called. The property IsValueCreated will evaluate to true when the List is created. 

Similar to list, you can also use Lazy binding for normal objects. Just instead of List, you need to create Lazy of Object like Lazy<customer>. 

Note: System.Lazy creates a ThreadSafe object by default. The default constructor creates object with LazyThreadSafetyMode.ExecutionAndPublication. Thus, once an object is created by one thread, the object will be accessible to all other concurrent threads.

ThreadLocal

Similar to Lazy<t>, ThreadLocal<t> creates an object local to one thread. So each individual thread will have its own Lazy initializer object and hence will create the object multiple times once for each thread. In .NET 3.5 or before, you can create objects that are local to one thread using ThreadStatic attribute. But sometimes, ThreadStatic fails to create a truely ThreadLocal object. Basic static initializer is initialized for once, in case of ThreadStatic class. 

ThreadLocal<t> creates a wrapper of Lazy<t> and creates a truly ThreadLocal object.

public void CreateThreadLocal()
        {
            ThreadLocal<List<float>> local = new ThreadLocal<List<float>>(() => 
		this.GetNumberList(Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId));

            Thread.Sleep(5000);

            List<float> numbers = local.Value;
            foreach (float num in numbers)
                Console.WriteLine(num);         
        }

        private List<float> GetNumberList(int p)
        {
            Random rand = new Random(p);
            List<float> items = new List<float>();
            for(int i = 0; i<10;i++)
                items.Add(rand.Next();
            return items;
        }

In the above method, the CreateThreadLocal creates a local thread and takes the lazy object GetNumberList when the Value is called for (just like normal Lazy implementation).

Now if you call CreateThreadLocal using:

Thread newThread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(this.CreateThreadLocal));
            newThread.Start();
            Thread newThread2 = new Thread(new ThreadStart(this.CreateThreadLocal));
            newThread2.Start();

Each thread newThread and newThread2 will contain its own list of List<float></float>.

LazyInitializer

Finally, coming to LazyInitializer, you can create the same implementation of the Lazy objects without creating the object of Lazy<t>. The LazyInitializer handles the Lazy implementation internally giving you static interfaces from outside which enable you to use it without much heck.

<float>LazyInitializer.EnsureInitialized<t> </float>method takes two arguments, in general. The first one is ref parameter where you have to pass the value of the variable where you want the target to be generated and the delegate that generates the output.

public void MyLazyInitializer()
        {
            List<Payment> items = new List<Payment>();
            for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
            {
                Payment paymentobj = new Payment();
                LazyInitializer.EnsureInitialized<Payment>(ref paymentobj, () =>
                {
                    return this.GetPayment(i);
                });
                items.Add(paymentobj);

            }
        }

In the above scenario, you can see that I have used a LazyInitializer which fetches each Payment object when it is required. The ref parameter takes a class type object explicitly and returns the object to the variable.

When to Use Lazy?

Lazy initializers were introduced in .NET 4.0. But you should note that it is not always necessary to use Lazy type of initialization. If you are using an object base which is resource consuming and you are sure that every object will not be required for the application to run, you can go for Lazy initializers. Otherwise, it will put additional load on the system. Also Lazy doesn't work very well with ValueTypes, and it is better to avoid it for ValueTypes. So you should use it very cautiously.

Conclusion

I hope you like this post. Lazy is getting very popular day by day and it is better to understand it properly before you use it. I hope this post clears the concept. Thanks for reading. Leave your feedback if you wish.

Thank you.