Alternative solution to HostingEnvironment.QueueBackgroundWorkItem in .NET Core

Question

We are working with .NET Core Web Api, and looking for a lightweight solution to log requests with variable intensity into database, but don\'t want client\'s to wait for th

Answer 1

Update December 2019: ASP.NET Core 3.0 supports an easy way to implement background tasks using Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Worker. It's excellent and works really well.

As @axelheer mentioned IHostedService is the way to go in .NET Core 2.0 and above.

I needed a lightweight like for like ASP.NET Core replacement for HostingEnvironment.QueueBackgroundWorkItem, so I wrote DalSoft.Hosting.BackgroundQueue which uses.NET Core's 2.0 IHostedService.

PM> Install-Package DalSoft.Hosting.BackgroundQueue

In your ASP.NET Core Startup.cs:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
   services.AddBackgroundQueue(onException:exception =>
   {

   });
}

To queue a background Task just add BackgroundQueue to your controller's constructor and call Enqueue.

public EmailController(BackgroundQueue backgroundQueue)
{
   _backgroundQueue = backgroundQueue;
}

[HttpPost, Route("/")]
public IActionResult SendEmail([FromBody]emailRequest)
{
   _backgroundQueue.Enqueue(async cancellationToken =>
   {
      await _smtp.SendMailAsync(emailRequest.From, emailRequest.To, request.Body);
   });

   return Ok();
}