Record locking in C#

[Adrian]

Is there a way to lock records and/or files in multi user application, using
C#?

Adrian.

 

[Ignacio Machin \( .NET/ C# MVP \)]

Hi,

Depending of what you want to lock you use one or other mechanism, for a
file could be as simple as open it as exclusive.

Don't know what kind of records you mean.

You can use Mutex to generate a lock in the local machine, but if your app
is used in more than one machine it does not work.

 

[Greg Young]

Yes .. the filestream class supports these operations .. I would highly
recommend not creating a mutex for every item as ignacio mentions.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.filestream.lock.aspx

note that this lock is a write lock

for locking the entire file it just matters how you open it (whether shared
or unshared) ..

Cheers,

Greg Young
MVP - C#
http://codebetter.com/blogs/gregyoung

 

[Adrian]

Thanks.
So there is no simple locking / unlocking of files.

Supposing file B is being used by several users;
a file A is created when file B is opened.
If another user wants to use file B, when file
A exists, he will be kept waiting in a loop
until file A is deleted when the other user
exits file B.

Is this a feasible solution?

Adrian.

 

[Greg Young]

No there is simple locking / unlocking

Just open it as exclusive read (others will get an error trying to open it).

Take a look at FileShare
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.fileshare.aspx. You can
pass this when you open a file.

Cheers,

Greg

 

[Adrian]

Excellent.
Thank you.
Adrian.

No there is simple locking / unlocking

Just open it as exclusive read (others will get an error trying to open it).

Take a look at FileShare
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.fileshare.aspx. You can
pass this when you open a file.

Cheers,

Greg