Hi frienz,
To create a Windows service, start Visual Studio, select the Visual C# projects section
and select Windows Service as the project type:
http://dotnet.dzone.com/sites/all/files/1_15.png
Once created, you will see that there is no designer. To jump into the code,
press
F7 and you should see a code structure similar to this:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Linq;
using System.ServiceProcess;
using System.Text;
namespace testService
{
public partial class Service1 : ServiceBase
{
public Service1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
{
}
protected override void OnStop()
{
}
}
}
on that add a new timer code like this:
System.Timers.Timer SentTimer = new System.Timers.Timer();
public Service1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
The OnStart event happens when the service starts and the
OnStop
event occurs when the service stops. For this specific example,
I am
going to create an application that keeps a log of running
processes.
Therefore, in the OnStart event I am going to use the following
sample code:
SentTimer.Start();
SentTimer.Enabled = true;
SentTimer.Interval = 60000; // 1 minute gap
SentTimer.Elapsed += new System.Timers.ElapsedEventHandler(_Timer_Elapsed);
private void _Timer_Elapsed(object sender,System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
sentmail();
System.Console.WriteLine("myTimer event occurred");
}
This basically puts a line in the log file that indicates that the service was started.
If the file exists, the line is appended. If not – the file is created in the specified folder.
Also, the list of current processes is written to the text file.
When the service stops, it is a good idea to insert a log entry as well. So here goes a
snippet for the
OnStop event handler:
SentTimer.Stop();
Besides the
OnStop and
OnStart event handlers, the developer can also
work with
OnPause and
OnContinue.
Let’s customize the service a bit. Return to the initial designer-less page.
There, in the bottom right corner you will see the list of available properties:
Instead of the default name (
Service1) I named it
TestService, so I can easily
identify it in the service list later on.
The actual service cannot be installed on the local machine without an installer. To
add an installer, right click on the gray background in the designer-less view and
select the Add Installer option.
Now, you should see the installer listed:
Select the service process installer (in this case –
serviceProcessInstaller1) and
change the Account property to
LocalService (otherwise authentication will be used):
NOTE: If you are testing on Windows Vista or Windows 7, you might want
to set this option to
LocalSystem to avoid an Access Denied error.
To test the above code, I need to install the service, since I cannot test it directly
from the IDE. Press
Ctrl+Shift+B to build the solution. Once the build succeeded,
head over to the folder that contains the executable file that was just compiled.
For my specific case, the folder is the following:
C:\Users\Dennis\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects
\testService\testService\bin\Debug
There, I can see an executable called testService.exe. That’s exactly the one
I was looking for. Now, launch the Visual Studio Command Prompt
(in the
Start Menu -> Programs -> Microsoft Visual Studio -> Visual Studio Tools)
. From here, I am going to use
INSTALLUTIL to install a service on the local
Windows machine. To do this, type the following:
installutil <path to executable>
Once you press ENTER, you should see something like this:
Once you see the message that says that the service was successfully installed,
press Win + R on the keyboard to open the Run dialog and type services.msc –
this will open the list of services installed on the current machine.
There, you can see the newly installed service:
The startup is set to Manual, so you can right click on it and start the service.
Once started, go to the folder that was specified for the log file and see if there
is the log entry.
In case you don’t need the service anymore or you want to test another build,
use this command to uninstall the service:
installutil <path to executable> /u
Finish :)
Now i need to say thanks to this url which helped me a lot in this
http://dotnet.dzone.com/articles/creating-windows-services-c
I think it helped u a bit
