Manage connection without 'using' statement

I replace this common statement:

using (var connection = new MySqlConnection(connectionString))
{
     connection.Open();
     // Do work here; connection closed on following line.
}

With this connection manager class that I made:

public class ConnectionBase : IConnectionBase
{
    private static readonly string ConnString =
        ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["ConnStr"].ConnectionString;

    private static readonly Lazy ConnectionString =
        new Lazy(() => new MySqlConnection(ConnString));

    private IDbConnection _db;

    public IDbConnection Db
    {
        get
        {
            if (_db != null) return _db;

            _db = ConnectionString.Value;
            if (_db.State == ConnectionState.Closed) _db.Open();
            return _db;
        }
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        if (_db != null)
            _db.Dispose();
    }
}

And wired up to my repository like this:

public abstract class BaseRepository
{
    protected readonly IDbConnection _repository;

    public BaseRepository(IConnectionBase connection)
    {
        _repository = connection.Db;
    }
}

Then I use it on top of the dapper method (since it contains connection.close() at the end of every method that it used).

public class MyTableRepository : BaseRepository
{
    public MyTableRepository(IConnectionBase connection) : base(connection) {}

    public List GetAllMyTable()
    {
        return _repository.Query("SELECT * FROM MyTable").ToList();
    }

}

It's been working great thus far for quite some time in production.

Are there any side effects for this implementation since it doesn't explicitly state to dispose the IDbConnection object?

I can understand why you want to remove the clutter from your code - but sharing the instance of MySqlConnection isn't a good idea. As soon as multiple threads are trying to use the connection at the same time, things are going to go wrong.

The connections are already pooled for you (See here) so you creating and disposing IDbConnections is cheap and easy.

I think you should create a connection factory:

public interface IConnectionFactory
{
    IDbConnection GetOpenConnection();
}

public class ConnectionFactory : IConnectionFactory
{
    private static readonly string connectionString =
        ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["ConnStr"].ConnectionString;

    public IDbConnection GetOpenConnection()
    {
        // Is there an overload to automatically open the connection?
        var connection = new MySqlConnection(connectionString);
        connection.Open();
        return connection;
    }
}

Then your base repository can do:

public abstract class BaseRepository
{
    protected readonly IConnectionFactory connectionFactory;

    public BaseRepository(IConnectionFactory connectionFactory)
    {
        this.connectionFactory = connectionFactory;
    }
}

Then all of your actual repositories can do:

public class MyTableRepository : BaseRepository
{
    public MyTableRepository(IConnectionFactory connectionFactory) : base(connectionFactory) {}

    public List GetAllMyTable()
    {
        using (var connection = connectionFactory.GetOpenConnection())
        {
            return connection.Query("SELECT * FROM MyTable").ToList();
        }
    }
}

I realise it doesn't save you much over the original code other than centralising the connection string...

A more advanced idea would be add an Execute method to your base repo but I don't think it would add much...

protected T Execute(Func query)
{
    using (var connection = connectionFactory.GetOpenConnection())
    {
        return query(connection);
    }
}

StackExchange Code Review Q#87608, answer score: 8