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First of all: I do really know what Google is and, yes, there are several existing threads for this topic, but I just did not find what I am searching for.

The situation might be complex and hopefully I won't forget to explain anything.

I'll come to the question/problem:

I've got an application, which is only allowed to run once on a system.

So I firstly locked this with a mutex, that's not enough because there is a requirement, that the application must accept command line arguments - even if it's already running.

Ok, I Googled it and finally tried the solution "WCF for Single Instance from codeproject written by KN.Sudha" with some modifications (only some structure issues, nothing that changed the internal behavior). Now I am able to get the already running instance of my application when trying to start a new one (with and without arguments). I can call the methods with [OperationContract] Attribute in my class which inherits from the interface with the [ServiceContract] Attribute.

So far so good.

Now when I call a second instance from a command line with arguments (sure, I mean the application path and then arguments), the call is transmitted over WCF to the first running instance to be executed, but I now want to wait for the result of the call and display the string within my external console, where I started the second instance with the arguments (the second instance exits after the call, the command line is still running for further activities).

If anyone has any idea to solve this, it would be very nice to share with the stackoverflow community :)

K_B
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Juppi89
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  • The linked document has everything you need to get this working, I guess I don't understand the problem? Obviously, in the `StartService` function you would specify a constant named-pipe uri, but that's pretty much it. You use `proxy` to try to connect to the service - if it isn't running, then you start the application, else you make a call over the proxy and deal with the results. If you want to return a result from the service, then your service (marked by `OperationContract`) shouldn't return `void` (as in the example), since that won't return anything. – sircodesalot Apr 23 '14 at 13:40
  • Hey, thanks for the quick response, but thats not the problem @sircodesalot. I already have a method with a return value marked with the OperationContract. And this is running perfectly. I want to display this result on my external console window, but the application is still a WinForms one... oh I see, I didn't mention that's a WinForms application, my fault. – Juppi89 Apr 23 '14 at 14:07
  • Not sure what your config is, but FYI you can make your application a Console application (as opposed to a Windowed application in the Project Settings), and then just start the Forms portion manually by calling I believe it's `Application.Run` (great for debugging). If that's the case, then yeah, you would just take the result and call `Console.WriteLine`. Let me know if that's on base. – sircodesalot Apr 23 '14 at 14:21
  • Take a look at this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/277771/how-to-run-a-winform-from-console-application – sircodesalot Apr 23 '14 at 14:28
  • Changing to a console application works with the output, but the big disadvantage, that always a console window is opened, even when starting the first time where always the gui must open, is a reason not to use this solution. I read the articel and I guess what I intended to do is not possible without any ugly sideeffect. I'm gonna try to seperate the access with command line arguments to an extra little console application. It's not the best solution, but I hope to be able to call the console application from my opened cmd.exe -> do the action -> print out the result to the cmd.exe window. – Juppi89 Apr 24 '14 at 13:41

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