Removing all delegates from an event dispatcher

Question

Given a class which is an event dispatcher whose underlying store is a dictionary of events whose key is the event type private readonly Dictionary<Type, Delegate> _applicationEventHandlers;, is this the correct way to remove all remaining delegates when the class needs to be disposed?

    private void RemoveAllListeners()
    {
        foreach (Type handlerType in _applicationEventHandlers.Keys)
        {
            Delegate handlers = _applicationEventHandlers[handlerType];
            Delegate.RemoveAll(handlers, handlers);
        }
    }

Or is there a better way? I have included the whole class below for clarity.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;


internal class ApplicationEventDispatcher : IApplicationEventDispatcher, IDisposable
{
    private bool _disposed;
    private readonly Dictionary<Type, Delegate> _applicationEventHandlers;

    public ApplicationEventDispatcher()
    {
        _applicationEventHandlers = new Dictionary<Type, Delegate>();
    }

    ~ApplicationEventDispatcher()
    {
        Dispose(false);
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        Dispose(true);
        GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
    }

    private void Dispose(bool disposing)
    {
        if (_disposed) return;

        if (disposing)
        {
            // free other managed objects that implement IDisposable only
            RemoveAllListeners();
        }

        // release any unmanaged objects
        // set the object references to null

        _disposed = true;
    }


    public void AddListener<T>(ApplicationEventHandlerDelegate<T> handler) where T : IApplicationEvent
    {
        if (_applicationEventHandlers.ContainsKey(typeof(T)))
        {
            Delegate handlersForType = _applicationEventHandlers[typeof(T)];
            _applicationEventHandlers[typeof(T)] = Delegate.Combine(handlersForType, handler);
        }
        else
        {
            _applicationEventHandlers[typeof(T)] = handler;
        }
    }

    public void RemoveListener<T>(ApplicationEventHandlerDelegate<T> handler) where T : IApplicationEvent
    {
        if (_applicationEventHandlers.ContainsKey(typeof(T)))
        {
            var handlerToRemove = Delegate.Remove(_applicationEventHandlers[typeof(T)], handler);
            if (handlerToRemove == null)
            {
                _applicationEventHandlers.Remove(typeof(T));
            }
            else
            {
                _applicationEventHandlers[typeof(T)] = handlerToRemove;
            }
        }
    }

    private void RemoveAllListeners()
    {
        foreach (Type handlerType in _applicationEventHandlers.Keys)
        {
            Delegate handlers = _applicationEventHandlers[handlerType];
            Delegate.RemoveAll(handlers, handlers);
        }
    }

    public void Dispatch(IApplicationEvent @event)
    {
        if (@event == null)
        {
            return;
        }

        if (_applicationEventHandlers.ContainsKey(@event.GetType()))
        {
            _applicationEventHandlers[@event.GetType()].DynamicInvoke(@event);
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

Delegate.RemoveAll has no effect on existing delegates. It actually constructs a new one. Delegates are immutable and cannot be changed after construction.

You can remove this line. I would not implement IDisposable or any cleanup code here at all. Just release reference on event dispatcher (it makes sense to do it anyway after calling Dispose().