What Is Dispose Method In ASP NET MVC?

The Dispose method is used to remove unmanaged resources owned by an object, such as file handles, database connections, or network sockets. To release these resources, the Dispose method should be used when an object is no longer required. This is particularly significant in contexts where resources are limited, as on servers or mobile devices.

Any class that stores unmanaged resources can implement the IDisposable interface in.NET, which specifies the Dispose function. The resources that the object is holding can be released right away by invoking the Dispose method instead of waiting for trash collection to happen.

For example, consider a class that accesses a database. In this case, the class might use a SqlConnection object, which needs to be closed after use. To ensure that the connection is always closed, the class can implement the IDisposable interface and define a Dispose method that closes the connection:

public class DatabaseAccessor : IDisposable
{
    private SqlConnection connection;

    public void OpenConnection()
    {
        connection = new SqlConnection("Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=MyDatabase;Integrated Security=True");
        connection.Open();
    }

    public void CloseConnection()
    {
        connection.Close();
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        CloseConnection();
    }
}

The resources held by the SqlConnection object can then be released by invoking the Dispose method, as in:

using (var db = new DatabaseAccessor())
{
    db.OpenConnection();
    // work with the database
}

The using line makes sure that the Dispose function is always invoked after the block of code is ended, regardless of whether an exception is raised.