High-Performance Streaming with System.Threading.Channels

Snippet

High-Performance Streaming with System.Threading.Channels

System.Threading.Channels provides a highly optimized, asynchronous producer-consumer queue. Unlike ConcurrentQueue, it natively supports async/await for waiting on space (Writer) or items (Reader). Bounded channels allow for backpressure management, ensuring that a fast producer doesn't overwhelm the system memory when the consumer is slow.

snippet.cs
csharp
using System.Threading.Channels;
 
var channel = Channel.CreateBounded<int>(new BoundedChannelOptions(100) {
    FullMode = BoundedChannelFullMode.Wait
});
 
// Producer
_ = Task.Run(async () => {
    for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) 
        await channel.Writer.WriteAsync(i);
    channel.Writer.Complete();
});
 
// Consumer
await foreach (var item in channel.Reader.ReadAllAsync()) {
    Process(item);
}

Breakdown

Channel.CreateBounded<int>(100)

Creates a thread-safe queue with a fixed capacity of 100 items.

await channel.Writer.WriteAsync(i)

Asynchronously waits if the channel is full before adding the item.

channel.Reader.ReadAllAsync()

Returns an IAsyncEnumerable that yields items as they become available until the channel is closed.

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High-Performance Streaming with System.Threading.Channels

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