I wanted to set up a simple data communication between two C# applications, and I'm not sure what the best method is in doing so. I've previously used Java Sockets and ServerSockets to get the job done, but I'm new to C#, so I've come for advice :) It's going to be two way communication with two clients exchanging strings or something of the like.
WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) is what you want.
You have several options:
Using pipes
Using sockets
WCF
You're needing .NET Remoting.
Remoting can be between two apps on the same computer, or across a network.
Here is a good start, the first link is a "Hello World!" remoting application:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/kwdt6w2k%28VS.71%29.aspx
I would also take a look at NServiceBus. It's really easy to setup and provides you with a reliable messaging system. Any messages sent between the apps (whether the destination app is online or not) are always delivered. The library leverages MSMQ to facilitate communication.
Related
I've never had to do IPC on Windows before. I'm developing a pair of programs, a standard GUI/CLI app, and a windows service. The app has to tell the service what to do. So, assuming the communication is local only, what would be the best communication method for these two processes?
By best I mean more robust and less error prone, not the best performance nor the easiest to code.
Note I'm asking about what to use, a standard TCP socket, named pipes, or some other means of communication only.
IPC in .Net can be achieved using:
WCF
using named pipes requires .Net 3.0 and above.
Code example
The WCF class NetNamedPipeBinding can be used for interprocess communication on the same machine. The MSDN documentaion for this class includes a code sample covering this scenario http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.servicemodel.netnamedpipebinding.aspx
Remoting
The original IPC framework released with .Net 1.0. I believe remoting is no longer being actively developed, and you are encouraged to use WCF instead
Code example
Inter-process communication via Remoting - uses a tcp channel
Resources
GenuineChannels, sell a remoting toolkit that includes a Shared Memory Channel. http://www.genuinechannels.com/Index.aspx
Ingo Rammer, wrote the definitive .Net remoting book, Advanced .NET Remoting, Second Edition
Win32 RPC using csharptest-net RpcLibrary
I came across a project recently that has wrapped the Win32 RPC library and created a .net class library that can be used for local and remote RPC
Project home page: http://csharptest.net/projects/rpclibrary/
MSDN references:
How rpc works: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738291(v=ws.10).aspx
RPC functions: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa378623(v=VS.85).aspx
Also has a google protocol buffers rpc client that runs on top of the library: https://code.google.com/p/protobuf-csharp-rpc/
WM_COPYDATA
For completeness it's also possible to use the WIN32 method with the WM_COPYDATA message. I've used this method before in .Net 1.1 to create a single instance application opening multiple files from windows explorer.
Resources
MSDN - WM_COPYDATA
Code example
PInvoke.net declaration
Sockets
Using a custom protocol (harder)
For local only, we have had success using Named Pipes. Avoids the overhead of TCP, and is pretty much (at least for .NET) as efficient as you can get while also having a decent API to work with.
Since you are limited to .Net 2.0 WCF is perhaps not an option. You could use .Net remoting with shared memory as the underlying communication mechanism between app domains on the same machine. Using this approach you can easily put your processes on different machines and replace the shared memory protocol with a network protocol.
The standard method of communicating with a windows service is to use service control codes. Windows services can receive codes from 0 to 255. 0-127 is reserved for system. 128 to 255 can be used for custom commands.
If you need to send complex objects to the service use database, xml, file, tcp, http etc. Other than that for sending control commands like reload configuration, process items etc this control codes should be used.
There are additional functionalities available such as querying the service. See Windows service documentation and api.
http://arcanecode.com/2007/05/30/windows-services-in-c-sending-commands-to-your-windows-service-part-7/
Your best bet is to use WCF. You will be able to create a service host in the windows service and expose a well defined interface that the GUI application can consume. WCF will let you communicate via named pipes if you choose, or you can choose any other communication protocal like TCP, HTTP, etc. Using WCF you get great tool support and lots of available information.
I'd like to add to this discussion. Please rebuke me if this is way out there - but couldn't a semaphore (or multiple semaphores) be used for rudimentary communication?
Is it possible to implement client/server communication between a C++ program (client program) running in linux OS with a C# program(server program) running in Windows using RMI implementation?Can anyone suggest any possible way...Any kind of helpful reference is welcome
You would need to go along the lines of Google Protobuf. It is available with C++ and C# as well.
A similar answer from MSDN
It does not matter if you send data from java,c++ or c#, when it goes
over the network it's just 1s and 0s. It's a matter of what you do
with it on the client/server side. So, be sure that the data that you
receive corresponds with the structure that you have (that you want to
deserialize to).
Sometimes you need to manually put the bits and bytes together to get
it all working out. However, there is something called "Protobuff"
that can help you get a common structure of the data that you send,
google it and read all about it.
You can implement client server with sockets and serialize/deserialize it using protobuf.
(MSDN link might help in solution)
I think message passing libraries would fit best in to this. Take a look at ZMQ for instance; they have binding for many languages found here
so you may have your event dispatcher in one language and listener in the other language. Also take a look at apache thrift
CORBA is one IPC mechanism that will provide the RPC mechanism that you are looking for.
Here is a link describing communication between C# server and JAVA client.
http://iiop-net.sourceforge.net/dnAdderRmiClient.html
At one of the companies I worked previously, it was used for communication between c++ and java programs in a client/server model.
They used a combination of ACE/TAO libraries.
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/TAO.html
I would recommend that you do not use remote method invocation for communication between a client and a server. In the nineteen-nineties we used to believe that RMI is a good idea, but since then we have realized that there are much better ways for communication between computers.
The most popular way is by using Web Services, and the easiest flavor of Web Services is RESTful Web Services. (Look them up.) This has the benefit of not caring at all whether the runtime environment of the client looks anything like the runtime environment of the server, as the case is with your setup, where your client is C++ on Linux and your server is C# on Windows.
Mozilla's XPCOM might be your bridge. There is also PyXPCOM. Realistically though the easiest way is to have an intermediate VBox. So you run a VBox instance (running Windows) on the linux machine and then use VBox API (from C++) to issue commands within VBox. So you end up with
Linux <--xpCom--> VBox <--COM--> Windows
When working over network it's protocol what matters, not the client/server.
In telecommunications, a communications protocol is a system of rules that allow two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. These are the rules or standard that defines the syntax, semantics and synchronization of communication and possible error recovery methods.
Source Emphasis is mine.
So, in order to communicate your C++ client and C# server you need to choose or define protocol that will be used for communication.
Your protocol can be build above another protocol. For example, you can use HTTP for transportation purposes and define your protocol describing what syntax should be used for messages in HTTP requests and responses bodies. This will help you, because there're many ready-to-use solutions for HTTP communication.
Actually you will build your protocol based on another anyway. HTTP itself build above TCP. You'll need to choose whether it would be low level or high level protocols. They all have their pros and cons.
But you will have to deal with messaging between your client and server yourself.
As an alternative you can use some Remote Procedure Call(or RPC) solution:
Remote procedure call (RPC) is an inter-process communication that allows a computer program to cause a subroutine or procedure to execute in another address space (commonly on another computer on a shared network) without the programmer explicitly coding the details for this remote interaction.
So that means that you only have to follow guidelines how to build your client and server and all communication will be hidden and will look like as just calling object's method.
Source
Here's short list of possible RPC solutions:
Component Object Model with DCOM. Wiki: COM,DCOM. MSDN: COM, DCOM.
Simple Object Access Protocol. Wiki.
Windows Communication Foundation. Wiki. MSDN. SO(credits to Sanju for link).
To wrap it up:
It's not a problem that your client and server are in different environments and are developed using different platforms. You only have to build communications between them using either your own messaging system based on some protocol, or some RPC system.
We could just write a C# program to listen messages from a particular port and write another C++ client program to write message to that port.As thus we could communicate both application.
I have several users on a single Windows Server 2012 (they are using Remote Desktop).
I have two (vb.net) programs, that need to communicate with eachothers - that is ... each user have two applications that need to communicate.
What is the easies (and most realiable) approach to have two apps communicate while several instances is running on the same box (on instance per RDS user)?
Thanks!
There're a lot of options:
Message queue (for, example, MSMQ).
ASP.NET WebAPI self-host
WCF self-host.
...
Maybe, in your case, I would go for the use of message queues. And, since MSMQ comes with Windows (in order to install it, go to Add/remove Windows features in Control Panel) and .NET Framework has support for it out-of-the-box, it could be a good choice.
Side-note
When I mention WCF/WebAPI self-host, I mean that each process can have a very tiny REST or SOAP (or whatever) API that may allow that any of the whole processes may act as clients and/or servers. It's a good way of having interprocess messaging
You can:
1) Use the SendMessage api - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/windows/desktop/ms644950(v=vs.85).aspx
2) Run a client-server http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/12318/Building-Client-Server-applications-with-VB-NET-fo
3) Use UDP broadcasting http://www.solidautomation.com/bryon/Using_UDP_and_Winsock_in_Visual_Basic_6.htm
Available options inter process communication would be:
WCF
Remoting
ASP.Net WebSevices
WM_COPYDATA
Socket programing
Interprocess Communications on MSDN would be resource
I am working on two separate C# applications, and I'm trying to determine what is the best way to create a remote procedure call from one app to the other. Webservices are not necessary in this case because the applications will always run on the same machine (Windows OS). What types of RPC are available in C# and .net that I can use?
I would recommend WCF with NetNamedPipeBinding for interprocess communication. Here's an example.
There's also Remoting which has been around since .NET 1.0 but becoming obsolete in favor of WCF.
There are several options available to you here. The most prominent though are
.Net Remoting
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Both can be used for communication between processes on a remote or local machine.
I would recommend .NET Remoting configured with IPC channels, in my opinion this is the fastest way of communication between applications running on the same PC.
Try Protobuffers over Win32 RPC
networkComms.net provides very general RPC functionality, see RPCExample.cs.
I've never had to do IPC on Windows before. I'm developing a pair of programs, a standard GUI/CLI app, and a windows service. The app has to tell the service what to do. So, assuming the communication is local only, what would be the best communication method for these two processes?
By best I mean more robust and less error prone, not the best performance nor the easiest to code.
Note I'm asking about what to use, a standard TCP socket, named pipes, or some other means of communication only.
IPC in .Net can be achieved using:
WCF
using named pipes requires .Net 3.0 and above.
Code example
The WCF class NetNamedPipeBinding can be used for interprocess communication on the same machine. The MSDN documentaion for this class includes a code sample covering this scenario http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.servicemodel.netnamedpipebinding.aspx
Remoting
The original IPC framework released with .Net 1.0. I believe remoting is no longer being actively developed, and you are encouraged to use WCF instead
Code example
Inter-process communication via Remoting - uses a tcp channel
Resources
GenuineChannels, sell a remoting toolkit that includes a Shared Memory Channel. http://www.genuinechannels.com/Index.aspx
Ingo Rammer, wrote the definitive .Net remoting book, Advanced .NET Remoting, Second Edition
Win32 RPC using csharptest-net RpcLibrary
I came across a project recently that has wrapped the Win32 RPC library and created a .net class library that can be used for local and remote RPC
Project home page: http://csharptest.net/projects/rpclibrary/
MSDN references:
How rpc works: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738291(v=ws.10).aspx
RPC functions: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa378623(v=VS.85).aspx
Also has a google protocol buffers rpc client that runs on top of the library: https://code.google.com/p/protobuf-csharp-rpc/
WM_COPYDATA
For completeness it's also possible to use the WIN32 method with the WM_COPYDATA message. I've used this method before in .Net 1.1 to create a single instance application opening multiple files from windows explorer.
Resources
MSDN - WM_COPYDATA
Code example
PInvoke.net declaration
Sockets
Using a custom protocol (harder)
For local only, we have had success using Named Pipes. Avoids the overhead of TCP, and is pretty much (at least for .NET) as efficient as you can get while also having a decent API to work with.
Since you are limited to .Net 2.0 WCF is perhaps not an option. You could use .Net remoting with shared memory as the underlying communication mechanism between app domains on the same machine. Using this approach you can easily put your processes on different machines and replace the shared memory protocol with a network protocol.
The standard method of communicating with a windows service is to use service control codes. Windows services can receive codes from 0 to 255. 0-127 is reserved for system. 128 to 255 can be used for custom commands.
If you need to send complex objects to the service use database, xml, file, tcp, http etc. Other than that for sending control commands like reload configuration, process items etc this control codes should be used.
There are additional functionalities available such as querying the service. See Windows service documentation and api.
http://arcanecode.com/2007/05/30/windows-services-in-c-sending-commands-to-your-windows-service-part-7/
Your best bet is to use WCF. You will be able to create a service host in the windows service and expose a well defined interface that the GUI application can consume. WCF will let you communicate via named pipes if you choose, or you can choose any other communication protocal like TCP, HTTP, etc. Using WCF you get great tool support and lots of available information.
I'd like to add to this discussion. Please rebuke me if this is way out there - but couldn't a semaphore (or multiple semaphores) be used for rudimentary communication?