C# Windows Service, Timer won't tick

Question

I have poked around here to try and find a resolved issue to help me solve my problem. Unfortunately I don't know enough about C# and Forms/Services to be able to interpret many of the answers, so I thought I'd post my issue here, in it's uniqueness, and see if I can get a sufficient answer.

I recently got an internship for a local company, learning C# and SQL to manage their shipping/inventory logistics.

I have gotten pretty good at creating windows forms with VisualStudios2017, and my knowledge of Java helps me pick up C# pretty quickly.

However, recently I was given the task of developing a Windows Service, which will run in the background, and do some repetitive task every minute or so.

Since I am familiar with the "Drag and Drop" techniques of adding features to windows forms, My supervisor suggested I use a Timer in my service, so, that's what I did, I did a "Drag and Drop" to add the timer component to my service, and renamed it "timerMainTick"

Here is My code. I want to start simple, all this code does is move to some local directory (henceforth referred to as $DIR), create a folder $DIR/GabbServiceDir, and make a text file $DIR/GabbServiceDir/AnotherTest.txt". However, every time the timer ticks, it is supposed to create (if it does not already exist) a new text document "$DIR/GabbServiceDir/Test.txt" and append the date-time to it every 2.5 seconds. This does not happen.

namespace GabbService
{
    public partial class GabbService : ServiceBase
    {
        public string dir = "../../Users/Tyler/GabbServiceDir";

        public GabbService()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
        {
            Directory.CreateDirectory(dir);
            timerMainTick.Interval = 2500; //miliseconds = 2.5seconds
            File.AppendAllText(dir + "/AnotherTest.txt","asdiofbhjasdflikjbasdf\r\n");
            timerMainTick.Enabled = true;
            timerMainTick.Start();
        }

        protected override void OnStop()
        {

        }

        private void timerMainTick_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            timerMainTick.Enabled = false;
            File.AppendAllText(dir + "/Test.txt", DateTime.Now.ToString() + "\r\n");
            timerMainTick.Enabled = true;
        }
    }
}

And a picture of the directory and it's contents after the service was started.

This is in Powershell, in $DIR/GabbServiceDir

PS C:\Users\Tyler\GabbServiceDir> ls


    Directory: C:\Users\Tyler\GabbServiceDir


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
-a----        6/23/2017   9:54 PM             72 AnotherTest.txt

PS C:\Users\Tyler\GabbServiceDir> cat .\AnotherTest.txt
asdiofbhjasdflikjbasdf

timerMainTick is Windows.Forms.Timer, and many of the solutions provided indicate to use a different kind of timer, the System.Timers.Timer.

This is all well and good, and may fix my problem, but the issue comes when trying to do something when this new type of timer ticks. When I double click the Windows.Forms.Timer in the Service Designer, it automagically writes a bunch of source, and gives me a method to begin writing code in, that magically executes when the timer ticks. I am not yet familliar with all of the magic that is going on in the backround, because I've only begun to learn C# as of the day I got this internship. I don't know what to name the methods for custom objects so that the "backround magic" will work, thus I am unable to interperate some of the solutions provided for problems similar to mine.

Perhaps someone could enlighten me.

---

For instance. Say I go into the Designer Source Code, and add a component

private System.Timer.Timer timerSystemTimer;

Then, in the Service source code and alter the method that was previously

private void timerMainTick_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)

To

private void timerSystemTimer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)

I get an error immediately:

---

The more reading I do the more I see lots of event handlers being passed around and I have yet to comprehend what they do. Perhaps what I need is a link to some good literature. I am capable of looking for this on my own but I imagine many people here may have links to other bits of good literature more specific to what I want to comprehend here.

*Something I have found so far that may be useful to people in my situation: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa288459(v=vs.71).aspx

Answer 1

Error in VS - You added timerSystemTimer but did not remove timerMainTick component which still references timerMainTick_Tick as handler of it's Tick event. Compiler does not find this handler method anymore since you changed it to timerSystemTimer_Tick.

Adding different timer - Never modify designer file code. You could add a System.Timers.Timer instance to your class code, instantiate it in OnStart and provide handler for Elapsed event. Here's a sample for you.