Getting a strong reference from the this pointer too late

It is a standard pattern for functions that are coroutines to promote the this pointer to a strong reference (either a COM strong reference or a shared_ptr), so that the object won’t be destructed while the coroutine is suspended. But it might be too late.

Consider the following example:

struct MyObject : winrt::implements<MyObject, winrt::IInspectable>
{
  MyObject() = default;
  ~MyObject() = default;

  winrt::Widget::Closed_revoker m_revoker;

  void RegisterForWidgetEvents(Widget const& widget)
  {
      m_revoker = widget.Closed(winrt::auto_revoke,
        { this, &MyObject::OnWidgetClosed });
  }

  winrt::fire_and_forget OnWidgetClosed(Widget const& sender, winrt::IInspectable const&)
  {
    auto lifetime = get_strong();

    co_await DoStuffAsync();
    co_await DoMoreStuffAsync();
  }
};

The idea here is that we register for the Widget’s Closed event with a raw pointer. When the event is raised, the handle immediately promotes the raw pointer to a strong reference, so that the MyObject does not destruct during the two asynchronous calls that follow.

But there’s still a race condition:

If the last reference is released before the Widget::On­Widget­Closed method reaches the get_strong(), then the get_strong() method runs against an object that has already started destructing. It will nevertheless produce a strong reference and increment the reference count, but that reference count does not have the power of time travel. The destructor is already running; you incremented the reference count too late. The result is a mysterious crash.

A similar problem exists with std::shared_ptr:

struct MyObject : std::enable_shared_from_this<MyObject>
{
  MyObject() = default;
  ~MyObject() = default;

  winrt::Widget::Closed_revoker m_revoker;

  void RegisterForWidgetEvents(Widget const& widget)
  {
      m_revoker = widget.Closed(winrt::auto_revoke,
        { this, &MyObject::OnWidgetClosed });
  }

  winrt::fire_and_forget OnWidgetClosed(Widget const& sender, winrt::IInspectable const&)
  {
    auto lifetime = shared_from_this();

    co_await DoStuffAsync();
    co_await DoMoreStuffAsync();
  }
};

The call to shared_from_this() throws std::bad_weak_ptr because the weak pointer cannot be converted to a shared_ptr.

In both cases, the problem is that the On­Widget­Closed callback is registered with a raw pointer. Instead, use a weak pointer and try to promote it to a strong pointer in the callback.

  // C++/WinRT
  void RegisterForWidgetEvents(Widget const& widget)
  {
    m_revoker = widget.Closed(winrt::auto_revoke,
      [weak = get_weak()](auto&& sender, auto&& args)
      {
        if (auto strong = weak.get()) {
          strong->OnWidgetClosed(sender, args);
        }
      });
  }

  // C++/WinRT alternate version
  void RegisterForWidgetEvents(Widget const& widget)
  {
    m_revoker = widget.Closed(winrt::auto_revoke,
      { get_weak(), &MyObject::OnWidgetClosed });
  }

  // C++ standard library
  void RegisterForWidgetEvents(Widget const& widget)
  {
    m_revoker = widget.Closed(winrt::auto_revoke,
      [weak = weak_from_this()](auto&& sender, auto&& args)
      {
        if (auto strong = weak.lock()) {
          strong->OnWidgetClosed(sender, args);
        }
      });
  }

C++/WinRT provides a helper constructor that does the auto strong = weak.get() thing automatically.

Since weak pointers will not promote to strong/shared pointers once the last strong/shared reference is destructed, you don’t have the race condition where the callback tries to do something with an object that has begun destructing.

The post Getting a strong reference from the <CODE>this</CODE> pointer too late appeared first on The Old New Thing.