title: Aysnc webapi post return before finishing
body: <p>I am making a asp.net webapi call that posts some data to the server and will need to be processed. The client does not need to wait for the processing to finish. I would like to return something like this</p>
  
  <pre><code>HttpResponseMessage objReturn = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.Ok);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>//start a thread to do some work processing the data</p>
  
  <p>//return while the data is being processed
    return objReturn;</p>
  
  <p>Most of the example I find are about how to use async methods and wait for the processing to complete. I need the opposite.</p>
  
  <p>thanks for you suggestions.</p>
  
  <p>more code for those asking, the following code gives me a warning that the method lacks await and will run synchronously. </p>
  
  <pre><code>public async Task&lt;HttpResponseMessage&gt; Post()
  {
    HttpResponseMessage objReturn = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.Ok);
  
    //data processing logic
    //something longer running that the client doesnt need to wait for 
    //like converting a pdf to jpg or other I/O operations
  
    return objReturn;
  
  }
  </code></pre>