Example of using LazyInitializer.EnsureInitialized

When looking at making systems more efficient it's helpful to think about being lazy. A helpful tool in the .NET tool belt is the static class under the System.Threading namespace LazyInitializer. In particular this class contains a method EnsureInitialized

This method is very simple to use and provides a convenient way to ensure that an initialization is called only once based on the value of the target property already being populated.

For example, if you need to load a file as part of the setting of values in an application you can use the EnsureInitialized method.

The following is a derived example of using the class to illustrate the usage pattern.

If you are having trouble viewing the below code you can use this link to view the gist github. https://gist.github.com/briannipper/ac2778ccd0d15b4ab217083331419ae7
using System; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace Example.EnsureInitialized { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var configurationService = new ConfigurationService(); var configInfo = configurationService.ConfigInfo(); foreach(var configItem in configInfo) { Console.WriteLine(configItem.Value); } Console.ReadKey(); } } class ConfigurationService { private Dictionary<long, string> _simpleExample; public ConfigurationService() { System.Threading.LazyInitializer.EnsureInitialized(ref _simpleExample, Init); } private Dictionary<long, string> Init() { // The following would be replaced with some expensive operation like reading a file from disk. return new Dictionary<long, string> { {1, "Hello"}, {2, "World"} }; } public Dictionary<long, string> ConfigInfo() { return _simpleExample; } } }