is this causing memory leaks?

Question

I have a couple of utility functions that help with querying lists and wanted to see if they I wrote them would cause either memory leaks or cause the client code to try to access already disposed objects.

 public static SPListItemCollection GetListItems(string RelativeURL)
    {

        SPList list;

        int length = RelativeURL.LastIndexOf("/", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);
        string webUrl = RelativeURL.Substring(0, length);
        string listName = RelativeURL.Substring(length + 1);

        using (SPWeb web = SPContext.Current.Site.OpenWeb(webUrl))
        {
            list = web.Lists[listName];

        }

        return list.Items;

    }

    public static SPListItemCollection GetListItems(string RelativeURL, string CamlQuery)
    {
        SPQuery query = new SPQuery();
        query = new SPQuery();
        query.Query = CamlQuery;
        return GetListItems(RelativeURL, query);

    }

The client code would look like this:

SPListItemCollection items = GetListItems("/subsite/mylist");

or

SPListItemCollection items = GetListItems("/subsite/mylist", "<where>...");

Answer 1

You're disposing an instance of SPWeb got through using SPContext. This probably will result in unpredictable behaviour as something else is expecting to dispose of the Site object you've got it from.

Rather, use new SPSite(SPContext.Current.Site.Url) and wrap that in a using tag like you've done there.

EDIT: Yeah, you're using OpenWeb() which does indeed return a new SPWeb, and you're disposing of that, but it's just risky to use a property or method that a class returns a new IDisposable of, as you don't know if the parent object keeps track of it's 'child' objects upon attempting to Dispose of them when the parent itself is Disposed.

Answer 2

The number one memory leak cause are not disposed SPWeb and SPSite objects.

Microsoft has released a tool that will do the check for you. Check out SharePoint Dispose Checker Tool

This MS Tool will also integrate into Visual Studio as a plug-in and will check on every build.

Answer 3

There is no memory leak in your code for SPWeb. The SPWeb object you get from SPContext.Current.Site.OpenWeb(webUrl) should be disposed (like you already did).

There is are other performance improvements I can suggest in your code:

1) Use list = web.GetList(lstUrl) instead of list = web.Lists[listName] ;

2) Use list.GetItems([SPQuery]) instead of list.Items. You should fetch only the columns and items which you need. (SPList.Items return a lot of internal columns which you may not need).

3) If your list is too large(>5000 items), You should use ContentIterator class to avoid hitting throttle limits (By default, this limit is 5,000 items for regular users and 20,000 items for administrators)