foundatio

name	foundatio
description	Use this skill when working with Foundatio infrastructure abstractions — caching, queuing, messaging, file storage, locking, or background jobs. Apply when using ICacheClient, IQueue, IMessageBus, IFileStorage, ILockProvider, or IJob, or when implementing retry/resilience patterns. Covers both in-memory and production (Redis, Elasticsearch) implementations.

Foundatio

Foundatio provides pluggable infrastructure abstractions. Use context7 MCP for complete documentation.

Documentation: Use context7 to fetch current Foundatio API docs and examples.

Core Abstractions

Interface	Purpose	In-Memory	Production
ICacheClient	Distributed caching	InMemoryCacheClient	Redis
IQueue<T>	Message queuing	InMemoryQueue<T>	Redis/SQS
IMessageBus	Pub/sub messaging	InMemoryMessageBus	Redis
IFileStorage	File storage	InMemoryFileStorage	S3/Azure
ILockProvider	Distributed locking	InMemoryLockProvider	Redis
IResiliencePolicyProvider	Retry/circuit breaker	N/A	Polly-based

ICacheClient

var result = await _cache.GetAsync<int>(key);
int value = result.HasValue ? result.Value : 0;

await _cache.IncrementAsync(key, count);
await _cache.ListAddAsync(setKey, organizationId);

IQueue<T>

await _queue.EnqueueAsync(new EventPost { OrganizationId = orgId, ProjectId = projectId, FilePath = path });

IMessageBus

// Subscribe
await _subscriber.SubscribeAsync<EntityChanged>(OnEntityChangedAsync, shutdownToken);

// Publish
await _messagePublisher.PublishAsync(new EntityChanged
{
    ChangeType = ChangeType.Saved, Type = nameof(Organization), Id = organization.Id
});

Jobs

QueueJobBase — Queue Processing

[Job(Description = "Processes queued events.", InitialDelay = "2s")]
public class EventPostsJob : QueueJobBase<EventPost>
{
    public EventPostsJob(IQueue<EventPost> queue, TimeProvider timeProvider,
        IResiliencePolicyProvider resiliencePolicyProvider, ILoggerFactory loggerFactory)
        : base(queue, timeProvider, resiliencePolicyProvider, loggerFactory)
    {
        AutoComplete = false;
    }

    protected override async Task<JobResult> ProcessQueueEntryAsync(QueueEntryContext<EventPost> context)
    {
        var entry = context.QueueEntry;
        // Process the event...
        await entry.CompleteAsync();
        return JobResult.Success;
    }
}

IJob — Scheduled Jobs

[Job(Description = "Deletes old data.", InitialDelay = "1m", Interval = "1h")]
public class CleanupDataJob : IJob
{
    public async Task<JobResult> RunAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken = default) { ... }
}

Job Attributes

Attribute	Purpose	Example
Description	Job description	—
InitialDelay	Delay before first run	"2s"
Interval	Run frequency	"5m"
IterationLimit	Run N times then stop	1
IsContinuous	Keep running	true

Resilience & Reliability

• Expect failures: Network calls fail, resources exhaust, concurrent access races
• Timeouts everywhere: Never wait indefinitely; use cancellation tokens
• Retry with backoff: Use exponential backoff with jitter for transient failures
• Graceful degradation: Return cached data, default values, or partial results when appropriate
• Idempotency: Design operations to be safely retryable
• Resource limits: Bound queues, caches, and buffers to prevent memory exhaustion

Queue entries: AbandonAsync() to retry, CompleteAsync() to finish. Don't retry validation errors — they'll never succeed.