Cleanest way to write retry logic?

Question

Occasionally I have a need to retry an operation several times before giving up. My code is like:

int retries = 3;
while(true) {
  try {
    DoSomething();
         


        

Answer 1

You might also consider adding the exception type you want to retry for. For instance is this a timeout exception you want to retry? A database exception?

RetryForExcpetionType(DoSomething, typeof(TimeoutException), 5, 1000);

public static void RetryForExcpetionType(Action action, Type retryOnExceptionType, int numRetries, int retryTimeout)
{
    if (action == null)
        throw new ArgumentNullException("action");
    if (retryOnExceptionType == null)
        throw new ArgumentNullException("retryOnExceptionType");
    while (true)
    {
        try
        {
            action();
            return;
        }
        catch(Exception e)
        {
            if (--numRetries <= 0 || !retryOnExceptionType.IsAssignableFrom(e.GetType()))
                throw;

            if (retryTimeout > 0)
                System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(retryTimeout);
        }
    }
}

You might also note that all of the other examples have a similar issue with testing for retries == 0 and either retry infinity or fail to raise exceptions when given a negative value. Also Sleep(-1000) will fail in the catch blocks above. Depends on how 'silly' you expect people to be but defensive programming never hurts.