Wait for file to be freed by process

Question

How do I wait for the file to be free so that ss.Save() can overwrite it with a new one? If I run this twice close together(ish), I get a generic GDI+

Answer 1

Taking the top answer I wrote a similar one, but it's async, non-blocking, awaitable, cancelable (just stop the task) and checks the exception thrown.

public static async Task IsFileReady(string filename)
    {
        await Task.Run(() =>
        {
            if (!File.Exists(path))
            {
                throw new IOException("File does not exist!");
            }

            var isReady = false;

            while (!isReady)
            {
                // If the file can be opened for exclusive access it means that the file
                // is no longer locked by another process.
                try
                {
                    using (FileStream inputStream =
                        File.Open(filename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.None))
                        isReady = inputStream.Length > 0;
                }
                catch (Exception e)
                {
                    // Check if the exception is related to an IO error.
                    if (e.GetType() == typeof(IOException))
                    {
                        isReady = false;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        // Rethrow the exception as it's not an exclusively-opened-exception.
                        throw;
                    }
                }
            }
        });
    }

You can use it in this fashion:

Task ready = IsFileReady(path);

ready.Wait(1000);

if (!ready.IsCompleted)
{
    throw new FileLoadException($"The file {path} is exclusively opened by another process!");
}

File.Delete(path);

If you have to really wait for it, or in a more JS-promise-way:

IsFileReady(path).ContinueWith(t => File.Delete(path));