CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netwcfservicesystray
GarudaLead
GarudaLead

Reputation: 479

Systray application with Windows Service

I have a small service with c# (.net 4) that mainly detects session changes such as computer locks and unlocks and reports to a backend sql 2014 express server.

I want to add a system tray application that will interact with the service / backend to capture more data and do some interactions with the logged on user.

Can anyone point me in the direction as far as a tutorial or overview of Application / Service creation and communication? Is this a WCF thing? Should the application and service be in the same project?

Thanks for the insight!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 5179

Answers (2)

Hoàng Long
Hoàng Long

Reputation: 10848

If you only need basic interaction to a service (start/stop/restart/status...), ServiceController will give you enough utilities.

Anything more than that would require a more elaborate approach, typically using IPC, writing to the same database and/or calling back to a web application...

There is no need to have service and the windows client to be in the same project. However, it would be nice that you can define your service name at one place, since your system tray app would need the service name to interact with your service.

Putting those 2 projects together or not is your call, but remember the relationship between your application and your service. Can your application stand alone without the service? It would not be nice if someone update the service without realizing that they also need to update another application in another project.

Upvotes: 1

Thorsten Dittmar
Thorsten Dittmar

Reputation: 56727

You can have both projects in the same solution. There are many options to interact with your service. The best choice depends on the actions you want the UI application to perform with the service.

My choice would be to use a WCF service hosted within your windows service application. There are many examples out there for self-hosted WCF services (one is here, though I didn't read it all).

Please note #1: To add the service reference to the client, you need to start the host outside Visual Studio in case you have both projects in the same solution, as the "Add service reference" menu item will not be available when running something in Visual Studio.

Please note #2: It might be a good idea to create your windows service to be able to run as a GUI application when Environment.UserInteractive == true. To do so, I tend to modify the Main method to either start the service, or to start a GUI using the code found when creating a Windows Forms application (Application.Run(new SomeForm()), etc.). That makes debugging a lot easier.

To avoid confusion: I'm not talking about creating a user-interactive service! I'm talking about making your service application so that it can run both as a service and as an application for debugging purposes. Like this, for example:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    if (Environment.UserInteractive)
    {
        Application.EnableVisualStyles();
        Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
        Application.Run(new DebugForm(new MyService()));
    }
    else
    {
        ServiceBase[] ServicesToRun;
        ServicesToRun = new ServiceBase[] { new MyService() };
        ServiceBase.Run(ServicesToRun);
    }
}

Add new methods DoStart() and DoStop() to your service class that just call OnStart and OnStop to simulate the service being started. Call DoStart from the form's OnLoad handler and DoStop from the form's OnClose handler.

Of course you need to add System.Windows.Forms and System.Drawing references to your project to allow forms to be used.

That way you can just run your service application from Visual Studio without the "A service can not be run as an application" message.

You still need to create a UI application to interact with the service! The above only helps for debugging the service and is something I've come to love, because it makes development much easier!

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions