Create a combo command line / Windows service app

Question

What\'s the best way in C# to set up a utility app that can be run from the command line and produce some output (or write to a file), but that could be run as a Windows service

Answer 1

Yes you can.

One way to do it would be to use a command line param, say "/console", to tell the console version apart from the run as a service version:

• create a Windows Console App and then
• in the Program.cs, more precisely in the Main function you can test for the presence of the "/console" param
• if the "/console" is there, start the program normally
• if the param is not there, invoke your Service class from a ServiceBase

// Class that represents the Service version of your app
public class serviceSample : ServiceBase
{
    protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
    {
        // Run the service version here 
        //  NOTE: If you're task is long running as is with most 
        //  services you should be invoking it on Worker Thread 
        //  !!! don't take too long in this function !!!
        base.OnStart(args);
    }
    protected override void OnStop()
    {
        // stop service code goes here
        base.OnStop();
    }
}

...

Then in Program.cs:

static class Program
{
    // The main entry point for the application.
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        ServiceBase[] ServicesToRun;


    if ((args.Length > 0) && (args[0] == "/console"))
    {
        // Run the console version here
    }
    else
    {
        ServicesToRun = new ServiceBase[] { new serviceSample () };
        ServiceBase.Run(ServicesToRun);
    }
}


}