Is Josh Smith's implementation of the RelayCommand flawed?

Greg D picture Greg D · Feb 17, 2010 · Viewed 12.8k times · Source

Consider the reference Josh Smith' article WPF Apps With The Model-View-ViewModel Design Pattern, specifically the example implementation of a RelayCommand (In Figure 3). (No need to read through the entire article for this question.)

In general, I think the implementation is excellent, but I have a question about the delegation of CanExecuteChanged subscriptions to the CommandManager's RequerySuggested event. The documentation for RequerySuggested states:

Since this event is static, it will only hold onto the handler as a weak reference. Objects that listen for this event should keep a strong reference to their event handler to avoid it being garbage collected. This can be accomplished by having a private field and assigning the handler as the value before or after attaching to this event.

Yet the sample implementation of RelayCommand does not maintain any such to the subscribed handler:

public event EventHandler CanExecuteChanged
{
    add { CommandManager.RequerySuggested += value; }
    remove { CommandManager.RequerySuggested -= value; }
}
  1. Does this leak the weak reference up to the RelayCommand's client, requiring that the user of the RelayCommand understand the implementation of CanExecuteChanged and maintain a live reference themselves?
  2. If so, does it make sense to, e.g., modify the implementation of RelayCommand to be something like the following to mitigate the potential premature GC of the CanExecuteChanged subscriber:

    // This event never actually fires.  It's purely lifetime mgm't.
    private event EventHandler canExecChangedRef;
    public event EventHandler CanExecuteChanged
    {
        add 
        { 
            CommandManager.RequerySuggested += value;
            this.canExecChangedRef += value;
        }
        remove 
        {
            this.canExecChangedRef -= value;
            CommandManager.RequerySuggested -= value; 
        }
    }
    

Answer

David Schmitt picture David Schmitt · Nov 29, 2011

I've found the answer in Josh's comment on his "Understanding Routed Commands" article:

[...] you have to use the WeakEvent pattern in your CanExecuteChanged event. This is because visual elements will hook that event, and since the command object might never be garbage collected until the app shuts down, there is a very real potential for a memory leak. [...]

The argument seems to be that CanExecuteChanged implementors must only hold weakly to the registered handlers, since WPF Visuals are to stupid to unhook themselves. This is most easily implemented by delegating to the CommandManager, who already does this. Presumably for the same reason.