Adding Windows Azure Caching crashes Visual Studio 2012 with datacachefactory argument null exception

Question

I've added the Windows Azure Cache 1.8.0 nuget package to my solution, but it ends up crashing Visual studio when I load the project. I've found that I can "prevent" the crashing by removing the dlls from the bin folder, and then again when visual studio adds them back to the bin while the project loads.

The dlls I'm removing are:

Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.AzureClientHelper.dll
Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.AzureCommon.dll
Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.Client.dll
Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.Core.dll

When I look at the event viewer for the visual studio crash I get this:

Application: devenv.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.ArgumentNullException
    Stack:
    at System.Threading.Monitor.Enter(System.Object)
    at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.DataCacheFactory.Close()
    at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.DataCacheFactory.Finalize()

I'm uncertain why VS is doing things with the dlls while the project is loading, but I admit I'm not an expert on that.

I've basically followed the process described on this page to add a dedicated cache worker role for caching: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/how-to-guides/cache/

I've tried removing and reinstalling the package, removing and reinstalling the Visual Studio SDK (Oct 2012), but the problem comes back.

Also, I don't have the App Fabric Server installed.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

In case anyone else runs into this problem, I'm providing what seemed to work for me here.

In order to get visual studio to load the project, I removed the DLLs from the project. I also removed them as the project was loading and VS put the dlls back in the bin folder.

I removed the references to the dlls. Then I removed my code that was using the datacachefactory.

In the end I believe that it was caused by an improper use of the cache in my code that I had performed a build on. I was able to correct the usage of it, build the solution and get all the dlls back into the project.

Previously by datacache object had not be static.

here's my correct usage of the datacache factory:

using System;
using Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching;


namespace WebRole1.Classes
{
    public class AzureCache
    {
        public static DataCache cache { get; set; }
        public static DataCacheFactory dataCacheFactory { get; set; }

    public AzureCache()
    {
        if (cache == null){
            DataCacheFactoryConfiguration cfg = new DataCacheFactoryConfiguration();
            cfg.AutoDiscoverProperty = new DataCacheAutoDiscoverProperty(true, "CacheWorkerRole1"); 
            dataCacheFactory = new DataCacheFactory(cfg);
            cache = dataCacheFactory.GetDefaultCache();
        }
    }

    public void Add(string item, object value)
    {                                                                              
       cache.Add(item, value);
    }
    public void Add(string item, object value, TimeSpan timeout)
    {
       cache.Put(item, value, timeout);
    }
    public object Get(string item)
    {   
        return cache.Get(item);
    }

    public TimeSpan TimeRemaining (string item)
    {
        DataCacheItem DCitem = cache.GetCacheItem(item);
        return DCitem.Timeout;
    }

    public void Flush()
    {
        cache.Clear();
        DataCacheFactory cacheFactory = new DataCacheFactory();
        cache = cacheFactory.GetDefaultCache();

    }

    }
}