.NET Worker Services

Trigger On

• building long-running background services or scheduled workers
• adding hosted services to an app or extracting them into a worker process
• reviewing graceful shutdown, cancellation, queue processing, or health behavior

Workflow

1. Use BackgroundService as your base class:

- Provides standard StartAsync/StopAsync handling - Focus on implementing ExecuteAsync only - Proper cancellation token management built-in

1. Handle scoped dependencies correctly:

- Create service scopes for scoped services - No scope is created by default in hosted services

1. Implement graceful shutdown:

- Propagate cancellation tokens throughout - Complete work promptly when token fires - Avoid ungraceful shutdown at timeout

1. Keep execution loop thin:

- Move business logic to testable services - Handle exceptions to prevent service crashes - Use PeriodicTimer for scheduled work

1. Add observability:

- Use health checks for readiness/liveness - Expose metrics and structured logging - Consider distributed locks for multi-instance

Deliver

• well-behaved worker processes and hosted services
• predictable startup and shutdown behavior
• proper scoped dependency handling
• health checks for production observability
• retry and poison-message handling for queue work

Validate

• cancellation token propagated and shutdown honored
• scoped services resolved within proper scopes
• exception handling prevents service crashes
• health checks report accurate worker status
• runtime behavior visible through logs or telemetry
• no blocking calls in async context

Related skills