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c#state-machinestateless-state-machine

Auto advancing state machine with Stateless

I've been experimenting with Stateless (HSM in C#) (https://code.google.com/p/stateless/) lately and I've come across something that I'm not really sure how to achieve.

Let's say I have the following states:

  • Start.

  • Connect

  • Read

  • Finish

What I'm trying to achieve is: when the TCP connection (in the Connect state) is established, advance to the Read state. Or, if it fails, advance to the Finish state (where it may return to the Connect state and attempt a new connection after a timeout period).

How can I achieve this auto advancing feature using Stateless, since firing triggers from within the states can cause a stack overflow exception?

Cheers

Solution

  • Given that I found no native solution on Stateless to do what I asked, I ended up wrapping the .Fire(trigger) in a task

    Task.Start(() => _stateMachine.Fire(trigger));

    Doing so, means that the state machine does not advance itself per say, but it's rather advanced by an external source, solving the SO exception.