Web Api + HttpClient: An asynchronous module or handler completed while an asynchronous operation was still pending

Question

I\'m writing an application that proxies some HTTP requests using the ASP.NET Web API and I am struggling to identify the source of an intermittent error. It seems like a ra

Answer 1

Your problem is a subtle one: the async lambda you're passing to PushStreamContent is being interpreted as an async void (because the PushStreamContent constructor only takes Actions as parameters). So there's a race condition between your module/handler completing and the completion of that async void lambda.

PostStreamContent detects the stream closing and treats that as the end of its Task (completing the module/handler), so you just need to be sure there's no async void methods that could still run after the stream is closed. async Task methods are OK, so this should fix it:

private static PushStreamContent CopyContentStream(HttpResponseMessage sourceContent)
{
  Func copyStreamAsync = async stream =>
  {
    using (stream)
    using (var sourceStream = await sourceContent.Content.ReadAsStreamAsync())
    {
      await sourceStream.CopyToAsync(stream);
    }
  };
  var content = new PushStreamContent(stream => { var _ = copyStreamAsync(stream); });
  return content;
}

If you want your proxies to scale a bit better, I also recommend getting rid of all the Result calls:

//Controller entry point.
public async Task PostAsync()
{
  using (var client = new HttpClient())
  {
    var request = BuildRelayHttpRequest(this.Request);

    //HttpCompletionOption.ResponseHeadersRead - so that I can start streaming the response as soon
    //As it begins to filter in.
    var relayResult = await client.SendAsync(request, HttpCompletionOption.ResponseHeadersRead);

    var returnMessage = BuildResponse(relayResult);
    return returnMessage;
  }
}

Your former code would block one thread for each request (until the headers are received); by using async all the way up to your controller level, you won't block a thread during that time.