Cached TeamFoundationServer

Yesterday I have read Buck Hodges blog post on how to get instance of TeamFoundationServer. Getting TeamFoundationServer is the first thing one does when writing code that utilizes TFS Version Control object model, so naturally it is worth to know. Frankly, I did not think I will discover something new, but you live and you learn...

Two choices available are TeamFoundationServer class constructor or TeamFoundationServerFactory GetServer method. Buck covers the usage quite nicely in his post. The point of interest for me was that TeamFoundationServerFactory method will actually return same object in two different calls if given same URL as GetServer parameter.

That means if you use GetService method of returned TeamFoundationServer instance, it will essentially be the same service! So for example, if you retrieve VersionControlServer and hook up onto some event, you will need to do it only once; the second instance of TeamFoundationServer returned by factory will be the same and will return the same VersionControlServer with event handler set (below is pseudo code just to visualize the idea; no chance it will compile):

// first place
tfs1 = TeamFoundationServerFactory.GetServer(url);
vc1 = tfs1.GetService();
vc1.NewPendingChange += event1;
...
// second place
tfs2 = TeamFoundationServerFactory.GetServer(url);
vc2 = tfs2.GetService();
vc2.NewPendingChange += event1; // not required! already set

So that is something you'd want to keep in mind while writing your applications.

P.S. And some additional piece of wizdom from commentaries to the post:
"I recommend obtaining services from TFS OM for all services except the WorkItemStore. It is not thread safe, where as all other services you obtain from TFS OM are. To work around this issue, create a new WorkItemStore object and pass the credentials that you get from the TFS OM."
It is not official and I did not check that, but I love to assemble those bits of information. You never know when it may come in handy ...