CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netvb.netinterprocess
sharp12345
sharp12345

Reputation: 4500

How to make a process fire an event in another process in c#/.net?

How to make process-1 able to fire an event in process-2, and send along few argument, to signal the 2nd process to do a specific action, and optionally receive a reply?

It is possible to do this using the filesystem, there could be a file, where process-1 dumps some commands/querys, and process-2 would be constantly reading from that file, but, this solution is not nice.

Any other way to do it?

(I know that its easy in VB.net to fire an event in a running process whenever a new process is started, IF the "single instance" is enabled in the project properties)

Upvotes: 2

Views: 5009

Answers (3)

sircodesalot
sircodesalot

Reputation: 11439

If by "process" you mean "app-domain", it's fairly easy to set up eventing between the two. In fact if you have two classes in two separate app-domains (where each class has MarshalByRefObject as a base class), then .net will automatically set up a remoting structure that will make events appear to behave as they would in a single app-domain. (Example here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.marshalbyrefobject.aspx)

The key here though is 'appear'. 'App-domain' and 'process' separation are intended to keep resources isolated on purpose. To access anything outside of your process you really need help from the operating system, like a shared file or internet connection or named pipes - something to that effect. But .net concepts like events don't exist outside of your space in the runtime.

In other words, you'd have to use something like Named-Pipes (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.pipes.namedpipeserverstream.aspx) if both processes are on the same machine, TCPClient/TCPListener (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.sockets.tcpclient.aspx) if communicating across multiple systems, or WCF if you need something more heavy duty.

If you'd like to see a specific example of one of these technologies in practice, I can write one up for you, btw.

Upvotes: 3

bas
bas

Reputation: 14912

This article seems to do what you are used to with vb.net single instance (and it seems still a viable option).

In short it seems that there are three approaches to accomplishing single instance like solutions:

  • Use a Mutex
  • Cycle through the process list to see if a process with the same name is already running
  • Use the Visual Basic system for single instance apps (which you can access from C#)

Upvotes: 1

Hamlet Hakobyan
Hamlet Hakobyan

Reputation: 33381

You can use named EventWaitHandle to achieve cross-process synchronization.

Upvotes: 2

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