Is it better to implement it as a service or integrate in the application?

Question

I am going to be creating an application which will monitor a folder, which could be a network folder and when new files are added in that folder it will notify the application. On notification application will import those files names into a listbox and will give the option to user to organize(move) those files into a different directory.

Two main things here, 1. I have to implement a logic for monitoring the new files in the folder. 2. I have to move it into new directory and in some cases I will have to create those new directories as user specify.

For the first step I am confused to either implement it as a windows service using FileSystemWatcher class, example can be seen here. http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/32591/Creating-a-Windows-Service-for-Watching-System-Dir

or do a file check based on timer, lets say every 5 minutes.

If I do it as a service how can the service notify application?

Answer 1

I would integrate this into the application - you might run into problems (permission-wise) watching a network folder from a windows service.

Some references and sample code:

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.filesystemwatcher.aspx
• http://www.switchonthecode.com/tutorials/csharp-snippet-tutorial-using-the-filesystemwatcher-class
• FileSystemWatcher vs polling to watch for file changes

To avoid some pitfalls (watching files on a network folder might be sometimes unreliable) poll the folder additionally for example every 10 minutes...

IF you really want to do it as a Windows Service you can use any form of IPC to notify the application - TCP or UDP or "shared memory" or Pipes or whatever...