In my application I have several DataGrids. I want to print the Content of the DataGrid with a Printer, which is located anywhere in the building. I want to use a PrintServer for it, so every user of my application can print over this PrintServer.
Is it a good idea to create a Windows Service which will handle the printing and lays on a Server or for testing on the same machine, I'm developing on?
WCF - is a good approach to use in Service-Oriented Architecture. The term 'service' here - is web-application(API,web-interface), and is not a windows service(like daemons in linux). WCF services working on IIS server. It is simple to create a web-api for your "PrintService", I think it's not a bad idea. Sorry for my ENGLISH=)
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I need to have a windows service that is configured with simple UI. I understand, that I need to create an API for windows service and use it in separate desktop application. But whatever I google I just got "you can't create UI to windows service" or info about webservice. I found this https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1159908/Yes-I-Know-But-I-Still-Want-a-GUI-for-my-Windows-S but this seems to be a pretty bad workaround, because I can't use already started service in my GUI using it. What I need is some code, explaining how to create a connection between these two applications
I'm working on a project that consists of a web application where users can start long process of generating different types of files.
User wont be able to download the files, only can start the process and the files will be located on the server and this process could take several hours.
My Idea to solve this its a MVC App that is communicate with a windows service and this service start the file generation process.
I have some concerns about this.
based on your experience, do you think that is the best way to solve the problem?
What is the best and easiest way to communicate the web app and the windows service? this is a one way communication, web to service.
About the windows services; should the service do all the processes? or maybe its better if the service only execute console applications that do the generation o the different type of files.
I really appreciate your help.
Since Web API can be self-hosted in any process and a Windows service isn't an exception, I would recommend hosting both HTTP API and the long process thing in the same Windows service.
Use OWIN/Katana to host your Web API.
Use Topshelf to create your Windows service.
If you design and implement this Windows service using best practices, it should be a good solution, and you should think about how easy will be the deployment of your solution since you don't need IIS anymore.
I would go still with the IIS. This is because of its support. Have been using Web webservice to host long running background service for long time without issues. Only concern is to remove the default application recycling.
Of course your application will need to handle properly start/stop events.
I'm currently working on an ASP.Net MVC4 application to automate a production workflow.
my client would prefer the solution to be "zero footprint", so completely running in browser.
One of the issues I can't imagine how to handle is to get data from a weighing scale connected to the client's serial/parallel port from within the page.
(Obviously this can't be done from the web backend ... )
I've been digging around, assuming this could be possible through javascript/jquery, but since this is running sandboxed within the browser, I'm assuming to get stuck that way ...
One of the approaches I considered was writing a self-hosted WCF webservice to run on the client that has the scale attached (hosted by a windows service or console app or so) that exposes the scale readout. Theoretically, that would allow me to consume the webservice in the IIS backend in my MVC C# code and serve it back to the client.
The only issue with this approach is that this would require the application to be hosted locally, where we'd prefer to have it hosted by an external provider.
Is there no way to handle this on the client side exclusively?
I can't imagine I'm the first person running into this, but I can't seem to find what I'm looking for by digging around on the web ...
Any thoughts ?
Thanks in advance! Stijn, Belgium
You absolutely must have a process running on the system that has access to hardware to support reading from any hardware interface. You have a lot of options there- it could be a local service running that can read the serial port and expose a simple HTTP endpoint to the browser. You can also do ActiveX-style controls for IE or browser extensions for Chrome:
http://developer.chrome.com/apps/app_usb.html
Just as a follow-up:
I ended up creating a user-control that reads out the COM-port through PInvoke of CreateFile to open the COM-port ...
Works great, no hassle with an external process running on the client etc ...
Does require full trust in the browser, but that's acceptable, since it'll run on clients under our control ...
grtz,
Stijn
I read several articles but didn't get an understanding regarding WCF (or remoting or ...).
I have written a .NET 4.0 WinForms application running on one PC where a user is making inputs.
I would like to display the GUI of the application on a second PC.
No inputs on the second PC, just viewing the application.
How might this be possible? (WCF or no WCF?)
(controlling the whole PC with remote desktop or vnc is no option)
Thanks a lot for any suggestions,
Ralf
You could make the main application expose a WCF service and have a second view application consume the service to view the data.
If viewing the area of the screen the application resides in is an option, my library RemoteViewing may be sufficient for you.
The included example server (it includes both client and server VNC) is read-only.
In the example server, instead of passing a Screen as a second argument to VncScreenFramebufferSource's constructor (that will capture the entire screen), provide a callback to the screen rectangle containing the application. That should be all you need.
I've been away from web development for 6/7 years now and I'm completely lost in regards to how to do things. I'm going through some tutorials on HTML5 and whatnot, but I was hoping to get a helping hand here.
I'm trying to build a (POC) website which would have the "server" monitor it's running applications and when a certain application is running change the content of a hosted page. I don't want the model to be PageLoad->Application Check, I'd rather have something like ServerStart->ApplicationHook->Callback->Model->PageLoad->CheckModel, so a hook is put in place when the server starts and the callback of the hook updates a model which the page uses to update. Although this architecture may not be the best way, in general I'm just looking for a way to have a long running process which starts when the server starts up. Eventually I'l move this to a Windows service which calls a webservice when changes are made, but for a POC I'd rather keep away from multiple applications interacting, as the Windows Service would need to be "called" by the server too and I can't think of an easy implementation of that at the moment.
So, if you were building a page which relied on events on the server and needed to be able to interact with an application on the server separately to an individual page, but the page needs to be able to "post" information back to that application what would you do?
My explanation has been a bit all over the place, so I hope at some point my question has come across clearly! :)
Maybe there're alternatives but I think your only option for this kind of setup is a Windows service. If you need to talk to it from other components, have it use sockets or listen for HTTP requests on a known port. Doing what you described from a web application is not impossible but it'd be certainly very hard since it's the web server (app pool executable) that controls what happens in the process, not your code. In a Windows service, you're in control.
Edit: here's an article about the different options for hosting a web service - it seems to me that using a Windows service is, indeed, your best choice. You may be able to use a WCF service but you'll have to talk to a local application on the server and that part may be easier to do just using a Windows service.