Unable to Access SQLite Data in MvvmCross ViewModel - sqlite

Question

Hello StackOverflow community,
I know there's a lot of code in this post, but I wanted to give you guys, the community as good of a picture as possible as to what is going on here so that maybe someone can help me figure out what my issue is.
Recently for a project I'm working on we've decided to upgrade from MvvmCross 5.7.0 to 6.2.2. I've managed to get our UWP app to successfully complete the initialization and setup process. The first viewmodel for which we register the app start also starts initializing. However, I'm finding that my vm initialization hangs at a particular line of code (shown in the code below). The weirdest part though is similar methods called in the app initialization code run perfectly fine without hanging/deadlock, so I'm not sure what's different Here's a simplified version of my viewmodel code to illustrate:
public class MyViewModel : BaseAuthenticatedTabBarViewModel, IMvxViewModel<int>
{
private int? _settingValue;
public override async Task Initialize()
{
//Some irrelevant initialization code
Exception e = null;
try
{
//This line of code never returns
_settingValue = _settingValue ?? await AppSettingService.GetSettingValue();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
e = ex;
}
if (e != null)
{
await HandleCatastrophicError(e);
}
}
}
The AppSettingService.GetSettingValue() method looks like this:
public async Task<int?> GetCurrentEventId()
{
return await GetNullableIntSetting("SettingValue");
}
private static async Task<int?> GetNullableIntSetting(string key)
{
try
{
var setting = await SettingDataService.SettingByName(key);
if (setting != null)
{
return string.IsNullOrEmpty(setting.Value) ? (int?)null : Convert.ToInt32(setting.Value);
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
//Handle the exception
}
return null;
}
All the code for SettingDataService:
public class SettingDataService : DataService<SettingDataModel>, ISettingDataService
{
public async Task<SettingDataModel> SettingByName(string name)
{
try
{
var values = (await WhereAsync(e => e.Name == name));
return values.FirstOrDefault();
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
//Handle the exception
}
return null;
}
}
Finally, the implementation for WhereAsync() is in a class called DataService and is as follows:
public virtual async Task<IEnumerable<T>> WhereAsync(System.Linq.Expressions.Expression<Func<T, bool>> condition, SQLiteAsyncConnection connection = null)
{
return await (connection ?? await GetConnectionAsync())
.Table<T>()
.Where(condition)
.ToListAsync();
}
Thank you very much for your help in advance
Edit: Forgot to also add this crucial bit of code to help you guys even further:
protected async Task<SQLiteAsyncConnection> GetConnectionAsync()
{
SQLiteAsyncConnection connection = null;
while (true)
{
try
{
connection = Factory.Create(App.DatabaseName);
// This line of code is the culprit. For some reason this hangs and I can't figure out why.
await connection.CreateTableAsync<T>();
break;
}
catch (SQLiteException ex)
{
if (ex.Result != Result.CannotOpen && ex.Result != Result.Busy && ex.Result != Result.Locked)
{
throw;
}
}
await Task.Delay(20);
}
return connection;
}

Answer 1

I'm suspecting that you are calling Task.Wait or Task<T>.Result somewhere further up your call stack. Or if you're not doing it, MvvmCross is probably doing it for you. This will cause a deadlock when called from a UI context.
Personally, I prefer the approach that ViewModels should always be constructed synchronously, and cannot have an asynchronous "initialization". That is, they must construct themselves (synchronously) into a "loading" state, and this construction can kick off an asynchronous operation that will later update them into a "loaded" state. The synchronous-initialization pattern means there's never an unnecessary delay when changing views; your users may only see a spinner or a loading message, but at least they'll see something. See my article on async MVVM data binding for a pattern that helps with this, and note that there's a newer version of the helper types in that article.