Intro to Windows Services in C# - How to create, install, and use a service using Topshelf

[@Stolen_Bus]

I don't know if you'll ever read this, I started learning C# about 2 weeks ago. I needed a new hobby for the quarantine and I figured that this one will do. You're honestly one of the most gifted people in passive knowledge I've ever encountered in my life, thank you for all the work you're putting in for us common people to learn. I can only wish you to never stop doing this for as long as you're enjoying this. Thank you very much.

[@IAmTimCorey]

I am glad my content is so helpful to you. Thank you for the very kind words.

[@germang.4514]

if I had discovered this channel earlier, I would have saved myself a lot of headaches.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Well, I'm glad you found it eventually.

[@jianhuichua1154]

I'm a junior c# full stack developer and I have to say Sir , you are a great help, not only make it easy to understand with step by step tutorial and also with a very clear and easy understand explanation. Thank you.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are most welcome. Thanks for watching.

[@Nathan_W63]

Thanks Tim, this is exactly what I needed. My buddy at work needed something to scan a directory for files, process the file data and generate an xml document for each file. It allows 2 systems to communicate that otherwise couldn’t, saving a project. Scheduled a Teams meeting to get the details of what he needed… 10 mins in I pulled up this video and 45 mins later we had it working! It was my first service too. Your content has made me a lot of money over the years! 150% increase in pay over the last 5 years at a large multinational company, the biggest contributing factor being the ability rapidly to solve little issues like this. It even got me an opportunities to go to Microsoft’s executive briefing center in Redmond. Never would have thought I would have the opportunities 5 years ago. I’ve had the all access pass to your paid content for a few years now and it’s worth every penny. The new Blazor course is great. I turned another buddy at work on to your content and he purchased a course too. Keep up the great work Tim!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks for sharing! I'm glad my content has been so helpful.

[@rodrigo6459]

Have been waiting for this topic for a REALLY long time!!! thank you a LOT TIM!!! you are taking this channel to the next level... not kidding here!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Awesome! I'm glad you finally got it. You are most welcome.

[@rodrigo6459]

Is it possible to have a service that accept parameters when windows starts?...

[@IAmTimCorey]

Interesting question. What are you thinking about? It would seem like if you could pass parameters in, you could do the same without needing to pass them in (maybe app.config settings) since you wouldn't be getting user interaction.

[@rodrigo6459]

Working on a "listener" for a GPS hardware that will transmit information to my server which will store the data in an Azure Cosmo DB, so basically it will be great to pass for example, a specific port to use, max concurrent connections from a certain GPS or even "query" the service for uptime, current connected devices and stuff like that.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Yeah, I think updating the app.config or even a local database might be the solution here. As for querying it, you could actually just store that info in a local database (updated in real-time) and then read the database from anywhere you need that info.

[@jonnywilson375]

What an absolutely SUPERB video - so well explained and I wrote a Windows Service in less than 3 minutes after watching this start to finish. Absolutely brilliant. Thank you!

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[@debkelly63]

Thanks Tim! This couldn't have come at a better time. I just started to write a service on Friday and now I'm going to do it this way. Love your videos; they are so easy to understand.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Nice! I'm glad you will be able to make use of this right away.

[@harag9]

Wow, I'd heard about TopShelf, but never really looked into it, this makes debugging services so much easier - and looks easy to convert existing services to use Topshelf - Thanks Tim!

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome. I'm glad it was so valuable to you.

[@bryandpalmer]

I made a small service to routinely clean up my downloads folder like you suggested. Works great! You are inspiring me to "play with" C# more than I did in the past with all these great tutorials!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Awesome!

[@harag9]

Excellent, just be careful with tasks like that, you don't want to be cleaning up your C:\ drive by mistake :)

[@dronefootage4115]

Love the detail and simplicity of this video. Excellent.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks!

[@rupertopasillas]

WOW! I've been avoiding using services for over 10 years cause of the messiness of troubleshooting while developing. Today while watching your video, I learned how to, and proceeded to convert a simple console application to a service. Thanks a million!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Awesome! I'm so glad it helped.

Hi, I've been using services a lot, but they allways come with console sibling. My pattern was very simplistic. Entire job was done in class library and service in start/stop methods only called start/stop methods in class library. The same job is doing console application. Debuging was easy, just debug console application. And for fun, sometimes forget to reference some library in service application :)

[@amymiddleton4984]

I have many applications that I can be called upon to support. I was looking through them and found Topshelf. I put it into KZbin and my favorite KZbinr came up, you. I am the one that was in shock to see you at KCDC, thank you for coming. This is an old video, but it is still relevent. :)

[@IAmTimCorey]

I'm glad my content has been, and continues to be, so helpful. It was nice to meet you.

[@marcjacquinot6363]

Messing around with NSSM utility to run existing applications as a service, I decided to look for way to write my own service from scratch for more flexibility and to come up with a rock-solid approach that also allows easy debugging and testing. Found your "Windows Services in C#" tutorial -> bullseye! Thanks for your great work.

[@IAmTimCorey]

I'm glad it was helpful.

[@llopez9967]

Thanks Tim, I am so glad that I came across your channel!

[@tomthelestaff-iamtimcorey7597]

Thanks for trusting Tim when you need help.

[@alexstahl1875]

You are a life saver. This was exactly what I was looking for. Perfectly explained and super easy to follow.

[@IAmTimCorey]

I am glad it was so helpful.

[@chunkyazian]

Definitely deserves a like. However, I recently had to implement a service for work and I got the 1053 error when I started it. What it said was "The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion" Instead of writing the following start method as mentioned in your video public void start() { //instantiate a bunch of objects and running through the constructors } I use start to call async codes as the following public void start() { _callStartTasksAsync(); } private async Task _callStartTasksAsync() { await Task.Run(()=>{ //instantiate a bunch of objects and running through the constructors } ) } This allowed the service to get through the start method ASAP and avoided the error

[@abdelrahmanmahmoud6348]

i face the same problem

[@dense3d]

Crystal clear explanation. Exactly what I was looking for!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Great!

[@DomChiariello]

Tim - thanks - I just finished your c# mastercourse (which was great!) and am embarking on my own projects to build a portfolio. I have a desktop scanner and a printer, and I'm going to create a service that watches the folder for newly scanned pdfs and then prints them - essentially a photocopier. Thanks to your helpful videos, I think I can pull this off.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Awesome! Great job and great idea.

[@lawre_17]

The best lecture ever. I was Wondering on how to sync SQLite database files to the main server and I thought of checking how services work and here you explained it so clearly Thank you

[@IAmTimCorey]

Glad it was helpful!

[@philgibbings6510]

cheers for this , i was trying to create a service using the windows service which wasnt pleasent, from this video ive adopted topshelf and its worked a treat. i now have managed to create a service that checks for USB sticks being inserted, and if usb has a serial that matches our data base it will check to see if ir requires a update,and if it does it then updates it accordingly. Great video Tim keep up the good work

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks!

[@rodrigo6459]

This video “inspired me” to actually implement the “download folder keeper” as a service, and I’m almost done, if any one is interested I will be uploading probably tomorrow the source code to github, I used what Tim tough in a video about directories but I also implemented a way to find the “default” download folder for your computer. Also used the “app.conf” as Tim also did as a challenge a few weeks ago. Thanks once again Tim... you had built a great community to share knowledge and learn!

[@IAmTimCorey]

I'm glad you are making use of what you learn.

[@rodrigo6459]

Okay guys... the project is up, all you have to do is download, compile and install. So far the thing is working for me! github.com/acidrod/DownloadsKeeper

[@TheJessejunior]

hey man, i have no words to thank you for some such i´ve learned from your videos this year. they´re always so complete and simple to understand.

[@IAmTimCorey]

I am glad my content has been so helpful to you.

[@a.porteghali7402]

Many Thanks Tim, I used to apply a do-while-loop to let a program keep running. I heard about the services as a best practice in such a circumstances but it looked a little scary to me. Thanks you again for make it so simple and understandable.

[@abhijeetkulkarni8261]

Thank you so much tim. This is an amazing video. Excellent explanation. I am going to write a service that clears my temp folder periodically so that it doesn't slow my system.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Great! I’m glad it was helpful.

[@groch94]

Great video, hope for more about services and communication between services and applications!

[@IAmTimCorey]

I can add it to the list.

[@IsackOliveira]

more than 15 years since my last visual basic class as a teacher and here I am learning a lot in a half hour video. I'm not that old but felt like 80y old easy. Very good tip, love the intros and explanations (I want to understand, not just copynpaste). sometimes its a bit too fast for someone that dont open a dev env since delphi 6 like me, those ctrl + ( . ) and tab autofill put me crazy sometimes, but nothing that a stop and 5 sec rewind dont solve. thanks! (sorry for my poor eng).

[@IAmTimCorey]

I am glad it was so helpful.

[@arthurnamu5770]

Tim, Tim... You have been of immense help in my career. And this one is just Exceptional!!!

[@IAmTimCorey]

I'm glad I've been so helpful.

[@SalottodiEdmond]

Thanks!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thank you!

[@SalottodiEdmond]

@@IAmTimCorey thank you Tim, you saved me a lot of time!!!

[@sothecominternational8973]

Always nice to come back to this even if for a quick refresher

[@IAmTimCorey]

Good to hear

[@parasrawat7287]

Such an elegant way of explaining things... Awesome dude

[@IAmTimCorey]

Glad you think so!

[@gauravparvat5291]

Thanks a lot for responding to my comment. Now the font and colour are clearly visible even in my phone.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Excellent.

[@PatricSjoeoe]

Hi Tim! Excellent video as always! My best tip to debug an ordinary win service project is use of #if debug in program.cs and call to same "start method". It works perfectly for me :)

[@IAmTimCorey]

Yep, that works too.

[@Bilalkhan-pf8xg]

This is so useful and well explain thing to learn today, you are the best Tim

[@IAmTimCorey]

Glad it was helpful!

[@geniusraghuram]

Thanks

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thank you!

[@bimalsubasinghe7584]

Lot of thanks to you friend. Its really helpful for everyone to easy to understand and has lot of value. Thank you again and again. Keep up good work

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@abrahameduardoordoricaisla9103]

I'm pretty sure that you've listened this many times. You rock bro! His video helped to me so much, can you make a video talking about the services recovery options?

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks for the suggestion. Please add it to the list on the suggestion site so others can vote on it as well: suggestions.iamtimcorey.com/

[@beerguy1320]

This was very useful!! I have to digest TopShelf into my brain a bit but I really appreciate the console app setup!! Thank you.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@aliazlanaziz]

got my assignment done becuz of this tutorial

[@IAmTimCorey]

Excellent!

[@msid9870]

are you fastian Ali? cuz i think we are doing the same assignment right now XD

[@aliazlanaziz]

@@msid9870 xD u got me. I knew someone would find this comment

[@msid9870]

@@aliazlanaziz haha small world. Anas here from sec D

[@aliazlanaziz]

@@msid9870 anas sheikh!? point me sath hi hotay na?

[@IyaTaisho]

This was a very helpful video. It truly gave me all the help I needed in getting a service stood up that runs once a day at 4 AM. Great job!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Excellent!

[@ben.thornhill]

Your content is some of the best out there on any subject. Thank you so much!

[@IAmTimCorey]

I appreciate the kind words.

[@chandana4554]

Thank you Tim. I did watch few different videos on this same topic. But this was simply the best. You explained the concept, the tools and the process so clearly and effectively. The idea of creating a console app instead of using the service project is brilliant. It saves so much time in debugging when we do a complicated service. Thanks mate. Much appreciated. BTW, it would be great if you could do a follow up video on using Squirrel with this project.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for the suggestion.

[@davidramirez3322]

Wooouu!! Tim u are the man! I am really happy to know to do this, I could do it on my own compu, its awesome !!! how easy you explain it, ! tons of gratitude. my first services!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Awesome! Congrats on your first service!

[@larrye]

Great! I was struggling trying to create a Windows Service using the template and this helped a lot.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Awesome!

[@josephmarsh5031]

Super useful. I love your idea of using a service to perform file maintenance! :)

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thank you!

[@avitwito1734]

Great tutorial as usual. Thank you

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are most welcome. Thanks for watching.

[@thejourney4609]

Wow! Such a great tutorial and beautifully explained!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thank you!

[@heroesch]

You are a great instructor Tim! Keep it up... 👍🏻

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks!

[@Robd515]

Excellent video!! Thank you very much for the quality content Tim

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@tamboleo]

Thank you very much! I am learning C# and i wanted to create a service for deleting a regedit folder if exists, i didn't know the language used on Windows services was c#. So this makes me learn it even more :D

[@IAmTimCorey]

Awesome!

[@summerbreeze25syria]

I really liked the idea of organizing pictures. I will use it for organizing my desktop.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Great!

[@SudarshanKrSingh]

Thanks Tim , so much to learn from your videos.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@TheBus1234]

Excellent tutorial, learned more than expected

[@IAmTimCorey]

Awesome!

[@Shinika01]

it's been a while i didn't stop here :) Happy i did today! Thanks, usefull stuf (veeeerry usefull) well explained as usual! I like that format you have for a while, quick snipet from A to Z with amazing (basic) ideas :) Thanks

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you are enjoying the content.

Thanks Tim! Finally I can abandon my holy trio consisting of Windows service for production, console application for debuging and class library handling all the fun. Service and console app were very simplistic. Just start and stop Task provided by class library.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Nice!

[@FEYSCONTROL]

Thanks Tim! Did the job nicely and smoothly.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thank you!

[@FEYSCONTROL]

@@IAmTimCorey Hi Tim, I could suggest an idea to create a video showing how a service can get the permissions in order to launch applications as this was my initial goal. It appeared the OS sessions doesn't allow that by default but I read it is achievable.

[@tommyoman5309]

Thanks again Tim! I was thinking about saving the day to day wallpaper-pictures coming from bing somewhere to keep them (sometimes very nice pics) , This will be the way ! So many good things coming from you ! Best Regards !

[@IAmTimCorey]

Sounds great!

[@WSDFirm]

Excellent explanation. Thanks, I was able to type along and understand.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Glad it helped!

[@luizhdsbr]

This a life saver. It made my job so much easier, thanks for that!!!

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@joseisraelfloresguzman75]

Thank you, this video was very helpful. With this my project worked smoothly.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@meenubala-br7vo]

Well explained. Thank you for sharing

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@acidhauss7018]

Great video, nice introduction to a topic I knew absolutely nothing about. I'd love to see a video on using Github within Microsoft Visual Studio for a simple project. The older one is good but think one using the actual baked-in functionality would be very helpful.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Something close to that is coming soon in a course. I'll be covering GitHub at some point as well.

[@garyburch1907]

Very helpful. I always have trouble with brown outs in my area and I have a plex server running in my basement. If I am out of town, the server would restart but the plex software would not. I created a service called to launch plex when the server rebooted automatically. Works perfect.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Excellent!

[@magicspider8]

Great video, keep up the good work. I got a job from watching your SOLID principle videos...👍🏼

[@IAmTimCorey]

Awesome! Congratulations! I'm glad I could be a small part in helping you get a job. For the next step to becoming a great C# developer, this might help: www.iamtimcorey.com/blog/20776/become-a-great-csharp-developer

[@MrRicardovws]

Great tutorial! It help me a lot with a project that I had to create a service that makes a data copy from Arduino to a MySQL database.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Glad it helped!

[@ogmiga]

This works great. Got this Just In Time. Very helpful. Thank you

[@IAmTimCorey]

Excellent!

[@eliasdargham]

Thanks for another great video tim! I'm using trying to use a service to listen on a socket server from a large number of client connections. The goal is to be able to run a scheduler on these clients and take their payload to store it in a central database.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Great!

[@alexwerges3766]

Thank you for this wonderful video. I was running into some serious roadblocks in rewriting a windows service at my current workplace due to the Microsoft project template making it difficult to debug initialization steps. Also, I totally agree with the text logging being an issue on long running windows services, since the person who wrote the old one was using text logging and it was blowing up the system despite changing to a new text file daily.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks for sharing that real world example.

[@wisbenah]

Thanks, Tim, great video as always.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are most welcome. Thanks for watching.

[@wisbenah]

@@IAmTimCorey What version of NotePadd++ are you using? I couldn't find that "Monitoring" feature you mentioned in the video.

[@IAmTimCorey]

7.4.2 - I believe I'm actually a couple versions behind

[@RalfsBalodis]

0:00 - Intro 0:51 - Creating Console Demo Application 1:45 - What is a Windows Service 3:30 - Visual Studio service app template vs console app 5:00 - Topshelf NuGet reference 5:58 - Service app code design 20:49 - Running the Service App 22:07 - Installing and uninstalling the Service 26:44 - Recap 27:11 - Ideas for a Service Applications 30:10 - Summary and concluding remarks

[@IAmTimCorey]

Nice job, thanks again!

[@kervinpeguero4468]

I always wanted to learn how to do that. Excelent way of teaching, could you sometime in the future do a sample of a service watching a DB for example a notification service or anithing using a database

[@IAmTimCorey]

I will add it to the list. Thanks for the suggestion.

[@dimipage666]

@@IAmTimCorey Also add that "email customer" option you mentioned at the end of the video. You're a great tutor Corey

[@stanislavbozhikov9046]

Very good .. I was thinking about parsing a text file automatically to database . and Now I get it .. thanks for the tip

[@tomthelestaff-iamtimcorey7597]

Thanks for looking to Tim when you need answers

[@lelanceflamer]

Hello, I love your tutorials I want to thank you for those! It was very interesting! So I can build my own Windows Service project or install the service automatically. Thank you for explaining what everything does.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome!

[@antoniocouto7092]

Thanks a lot for the video, even now after these years help me a lot. Regards.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@charlesm.1638]

Thank you for this great video. My goal from what I learned from your video is that I need to do check specific equipment on my network to make sure they are running and provide updates on the status of the equipment say for example every 10 minutes I would like my service to check the equipment every 10 minutes by doing a ping test to see if there is a return if there is no return the change the status code to indicate this. The information will update a database table as changes occur. I figured having running a Windows service is better than using a task manager to perform the job.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Sounds great.

[@lucas1984FD]

Tim is a wonderful tutorial. Thanks

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@peadarfitzpatrick3287]

Great tutorial as always Tim! Very useful!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thank you!

[@bssns]

Many thanks, sumptuous and very clear ...

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@DivakarRaj]

One idea for usage of this service. Our laptops having Lithium Ion batteries which are best preserved when the power charge is between 40% and 80%. It is not a good idea on the battery to charge it fully to 100% nor drain it to 0%. We can create a service to monitor the battery % and give a pop up message to the user when the battery reaches either 40% or 80% notifying the user to switch on/off the power. Note : I did the same to my iPhone using Shortcuts app. Planning to do the same to my laptop using the info from this video.

[@DivakarRaj]

So I faced a roadblock here. Apparently Windows Services cannot interact with the UI, thereby I cant use a MessageBox.Show code. Moving to an emailer option for now.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You would need to build a desktop application for that instead. You can make it hide in the system tray, but user interaction means you need to be running in the user's session. Services don't do that unless they are logged in as the user (and then only for that user).

[@noodler911]

@@IAmTimCorey Hello Tim. Your video is amazing! Thank you for that! I just have one question. How did you learn how to make services in C# and how much time did you spend on it in order to learn that?

[@Ekas_]

Wow this is crazy useful

[@IAmTimCorey]

Great!

[@MCcrafterDE]

You´re awesome, really perfect understanding!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thank you!

[@Manithan123]

Amazingly clear!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thank you!

[@benshkabanka9044]

great Video! I always Use Windows Service Project. When I do this, I always create a second project in the same solution with a simple GUI, to trigger the same methods as the service does, when I need to debug it. That also works pretty well, but maybe I will try this solution in the future.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks!

[@dreamvallyhasan4807]

Thanks for excellent video

[@IAmTimCorey]

So nice of you

[@ZoidbergForPresident]

9:30 OnTimerElapsed ? :D 25:30 Interesting, the Datetime format isn't the same than on executing it within VS. Cool video! Really interesting, especially with that Topshelf package, really easy.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Yeah, that would have been a good name. As for the format, I think it is because of how I said to write it to the file (I chose the format).

[@ajayseal9990]

Very nice tutorial I got my solution, Thanks Lot Tim and looking more from you thanks again

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@modsjohnson4243]

Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion. Please help! I keep getting this

[@steliosvasiliadis3480]

Great video! We use this technique to export web services

[@IAmTimCorey]

That's great!

[@nestorvalleser6275]

Thanks for sharing your code and knowledge. This will help me a lot... God bless!

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@MrSuddens]

Thank you! I will be making an API connector to check for updates in my SQL database table and post them via API.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Excellent!

Amazing video, thanks for the help! Keep doing the good work, it helps us a lot! :D

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@waynehawkins654]

Excellent. Thank you for this. I a web coder and needing a Services project to do SQL things. Big help :)

[@IAmTimCorey]

Glad it helped!

[@waynehawkins654]

Be good to see a video that expands on this one to show a simple toolbar icon that allows you to start\stop services and maybe open a window that allows one to change a setting.

[@pauljohns5447]

Amazing. Thank you.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@ismailjama7440]

Thanks a lot Tim, you are the best

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@insomnia8692]

In File Explorer in the address bar you can just type "cmd" and it will open cmd to that directory. Great video by the way, still trying to think of some ideas on how to use this!

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks! I didn't know that.

[@bharathyadav3614]

Great Tutorial Tim, As always. Keep it going... How about a tutorial on hosting a service on IIS next?

[@IAmTimCorey]

What type of service are you referring to? Just a website or WCF or something else?

[@bharathyadav3614]

IAmTimCorey Oops... I should’ve been much more specific. WCF service would do just fine. :)

[@babeyoshafiq]

thanks for the clear explanation.

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@rileynobles7146]

Very nicely done video, Thanks

[@IAmTimCorey]

You are welcome.

[@jgoungs]

Very good tim. God bless you

[@IAmTimCorey]

Thanks, and to you!

[@Allium-Cepa]

Would you still use or recommend Topshelf?

[@sunilanthony17]

Not bad, I've never used Topshelf but did create Windows Service using the out of the box windows service.

[@IAmTimCorey]

Nice!