CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#serviceprocessscheduled-tasks
Mike Marks
Mike Marks

Reputation: 10139

How would I create a long running process in C#?

This may seem very elementary, but I don't really have any experience in this realm - all my experience has been on the web side of things.

I need to create a process of some sort that will repeatedly query an API (around 5 times a second), get the results from the API (in JSON format), and then my process will do what it needs to do with the results (in my case, insert them into a SQL database). These details don't really matter to the scope of the question I have, I just want to give you an idea on what I'm trying to achieve in case someone wants to recommend a better way of doing it.

My first thought was to create a console app that basically never quits (unless I specifically tell it to). Is a console app the way to go for this? The idea is I'll have a VM set up which will host my solution, including this "process" I create. I'm not all too familiar with Windows Services, or Windows Tasks, but I probably need to write some custom code so therefore I imagine I can't use the Windows Task Scheduler, am I right?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 137

Answers (1)

Mike Dinescu
Mike Dinescu

Reputation: 55720

Once options would be to create a Windows Service which is the OS-level implementation of a long running process. To do so in C# you may wish to read through some tutorials online, perhaps starting with the MSDN Walkthrough. You should also read about Windows Services in general and the differences between a service and a regular user process (mainly the fact that services have no UI and can't interact with the user directly, and some of the other security considerations).

Other options may be to leverage a framework such as WCF or similar.

Upvotes: 2

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