Control Life of aggregated object

[Tony Maresca]

I have a general question on how to best go about
controlling the lifetime of an aggregated object.

public class Contained : IDisposable
{
public void Dispose()
{
// cleanup
}
}

public class MyContainer : IDisposable
{
public void Dispose()
{
m_Contained.Dispose();
}

public MyContained Contained
{
get
{
return m_Contained;
}
}
private Contained m_Contained = new Contained();

}

When a client references the Contained property, I want
to prevent them from disposing the returned instance.

BTW, let's assume that I don't own Contained, it is
class from another library, which I'm consuming. Let's
further assume that Contained may be sealed.

 

[Tony Maresca]

Sorry, in the example code "MyContained"
should be "Contained"

 

[cody]

You do do some kind of reference counting.
The best way is to provide no accessor for the contained disposible object,
just helper methods to invoke necessary methods of it:

public class MyContainer : IDisposable
{
public void Dispose()
{
m_Contained.Dispose();
}

public void Foo()
{
m_Contained.Foo();
}

private Contained m_Contained = new Contained();
}