How to spawn a process and capture its STDOUT in .NET? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Redirecting the stream is asynchronous and will potentially continue after the process has terminated. It is mentioned by Umar to cancel after process termination process.CancelOutputRead(). However that has data loss potential.

This is working reliably for me:

process.WaitForExit(...);
...
while (process.StandardOutput.EndOfStream == false)
{
    Thread.Sleep(100);
}

I didn't try this approach but I like the suggestion from Sly:

if (process.WaitForExit(timeout))
{
    process.WaitForExit();
}

Answer 2

The answer from Judah did not work for me (or is not complete) as the application was exiting after the first BeginOutputReadLine();

This works for me as a complete snippet, reading the constant output of a ping:

        var process = new Process();
        process.StartInfo.FileName = "ping";
        process.StartInfo.Arguments = "google.com -t";
        process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
        process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
        process.OutputDataReceived += (sender, a) => Console.WriteLine(a.Data);
        process.Start();
        process.BeginOutputReadLine();
        process.WaitForExit();

Answer 3

Here's a method that I use to run a process and gets its output and errors :

public static string ShellExecute(this string path, string command, TextWriter writer, params string[] arguments)
    {
        using (var process = Process.Start(new ProcessStartInfo { WorkingDirectory = path, FileName = command, Arguments = string.Join(" ", arguments), UseShellExecute = false, RedirectStandardOutput = true, RedirectStandardError = true }))
        {
            using (process.StandardOutput)
            {
                writer.WriteLine(process.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd());
            }
            using (process.StandardError)
            {
                writer.WriteLine(process.StandardError.ReadToEnd());
            }
        }

        return path;
    }

For example :

@"E:\Temp\MyWorkingDirectory".ShellExecute(@"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin\svcutil.exe", Console.Out);

Answer 4

You need to call p.Start() to actually run the process after you set the StartInfo. As it is, your function is probably hanging on the WaitForExit() call because the process was never actually started.

Answer 5

Here's some full and simple code to do this. This worked fine when I used it.

var processStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo
{
    FileName = @"C:\SomeProgram",
    Arguments = "Arguments",
    RedirectStandardOutput = true,
    UseShellExecute = false
};
var process = Process.Start(processStartInfo);
var output = process.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
process.WaitForExit();

Note that this only captures standard output; it doesn't capture standard error. If you want both, use this technique for each stream.

Answer 6

I just tried this very thing and the following worked for me:

StringBuilder outputBuilder;
ProcessStartInfo processStartInfo;
Process process;

outputBuilder = new StringBuilder();

processStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
processStartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
processStartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
processStartInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;
processStartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
processStartInfo.Arguments = "<insert command line arguments here>";
processStartInfo.FileName = "<insert tool path here>";

process = new Process();
process.StartInfo = processStartInfo;
// enable raising events because Process does not raise events by default
process.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
// attach the event handler for OutputDataReceived before starting the process
process.OutputDataReceived += new DataReceivedEventHandler
(
    delegate(object sender, DataReceivedEventArgs e)
    {
        // append the new data to the data already read-in
        outputBuilder.Append(e.Data);
    }
);
// start the process
// then begin asynchronously reading the output
// then wait for the process to exit
// then cancel asynchronously reading the output
process.Start();
process.BeginOutputReadLine();
process.WaitForExit();
process.CancelOutputRead();

// use the output
string output = outputBuilder.ToString();