HttpContext.Current and Web Api

Using HttpContext.Current in WebApi is dangerous because of async

HttpContext.Current gets the current context by Thread (I looked into the implementation directly). 提问中的描述

It would be more correct to say that HttpContext is applied to a thread; or a thread "enters" the HttpContext.

Using HttpContext.Current inside of async Task is not possible, because it can run on another Thread.  提问中的描述

Not at all; the default behavior of async/await will resume on an arbitrary thread, but that thread will enter the request context before resuming your async method.

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The key to this is the SynchronizationContext. I have an MSDN article on the subject if you're not familiar with it. A SynchronizationContext defines a "context" for a platform, with the common ones being UI contexts (WPF, WinPhone, WinForms, etc), the thread pool context, and the ASP.NET request context.

The ASP.NET request context manages HttpContext.Current as well as a few other things such as culture and security. The UI contexts are all tightly associated with a single thread (the UI thread), but the ASP.NET request context is not tied to a specific thread. It will, however, only allow one thread in the request context at a time.

The other part of the solution is how async and await work. I have an async intro on my blog that describes their behavior. In summary, await by default will capture the current context (which is SynchronizationContext.Current unless it is null), and use that context to resume the async method. So, await is automatically capturing the ASP.NET SynchronizationContext and will resume the async method within that request context (thus preserving culture, security, and HttpContext.Current).

If you await ConfigureAwait(false), then you're explicitly telling await to not capture the context.

Note that ASP.NET did have to change its SynchronizationContext to work cleanly with async/await. You have to ensure that the application is compiled against .NET 4.5 and also explicitly targets 4.5 in its web.config; this is the default for new ASP.NET 4.5 projects but must be explicitly set if you upgraded an existing project from ASP.NET 4.0 or earlier.

You can ensure these settings are correct by executing your application against .NET 4.5 and observing SynchronizationContext.Current. If it is AspNetSynchronizationContext, then you're good; if it's LegacyAspNetSynchronizationContext, then the settings are wrong.

As long as the settings are correct (and you are using the ASP.NET 4.5 AspNetSynchronizationContext), then you can safely use HttpContext.Current after an await without worrying about it.