WeakReference and event handling

Question

Is it a good practice to implement event handling through WeakReference if that event is the only thing holding the reference and that we would need the object to be garbage

Answer 1

Weak delegate pattern is something that should be there in CLR. Normal events exhibit "notify me while you are alive" semantics, while often we need "notify me while I'm alive". Just having delegate on WeakReference is wrong, because delegate is an object too and even when recepient is still alive and have incoming references, delegate itself is only being referenced by said WeakReference and will be collected instantly. See this old post for an example of implementation.