Click here to Skip to main content
15,881,711 members
Articles / Programming Languages / C#

Inter-Process Communication in .NET Using Named Pipes, Part 2

Rate me:
Please Sign up or sign in to vote.
4.77/5 (41 votes)
14 Jun 20044 min read 273.2K   4.2K   132  
This article explores a way of implementing Named Pipes based Inter-Process Communication between .NET applications
using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.IO;

using AppModule.InterProcessComm;
using AppModule.NamedPipes;

namespace Server {

	public sealed class ServerNamedPipe : IDisposable {
		internal Thread PipeThread;
		internal ServerPipeConnection PipeConnection;
		internal bool Listen = true;
		internal DateTime LastAction;
		private bool disposed = false;

		private void PipeListener() {
			CheckIfDisposed();
			try {
				Listen = Form1.PipeManager.Listen;
				Form1.ActivityRef.AppendText("Pipe " + this.PipeConnection.NativeHandle.ToString() + ": new pipe started" + Environment.NewLine);
				while (Listen) {
					LastAction = DateTime.Now;
					string request = PipeConnection.Read();
					LastAction = DateTime.Now;
					if (request.Trim() != "") {
						PipeConnection.Write(Form1.PipeManager.HandleRequest(request));
						Form1.ActivityRef.AppendText("Pipe " + this.PipeConnection.NativeHandle.ToString() + ": request handled" + Environment.NewLine);
					}
					else {
						PipeConnection.Write("Error: bad request");
					}
					LastAction = DateTime.Now;
					PipeConnection.Disconnect();
					if (Listen) {
						Form1.ActivityRef.AppendText("Pipe " + this.PipeConnection.NativeHandle.ToString() + ": listening" + Environment.NewLine);
						Connect();
					}
					Form1.PipeManager.WakeUp();
				}
			} 
			catch (System.Threading.ThreadAbortException ex) { }
			catch (System.Threading.ThreadStateException ex) { }
			catch (Exception ex) { 
				// Log exception
			}
			finally {
				this.Close();
			}
		}
		internal void Connect() {
			CheckIfDisposed();
			PipeConnection.Connect();
		}
		internal void Close() {
			CheckIfDisposed();
			this.Listen = false;
			Form1.PipeManager.RemoveServerChannel(this.PipeConnection.NativeHandle);
			this.Dispose();
		}
		internal void Start() {
			CheckIfDisposed();
			PipeThread.Start();
		}
		private void CheckIfDisposed() {
			if(this.disposed) {
				throw new ObjectDisposedException("ServerNamedPipe");
			}
		}
		public void Dispose() {
			Dispose(true);
			GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
		}
		private void Dispose(bool disposing) {
			if(!this.disposed) {
				PipeConnection.Dispose();
				if (PipeThread != null) {
					try {
						PipeThread.Abort();
					} 
					catch (System.Threading.ThreadAbortException ex) { }
					catch (System.Threading.ThreadStateException ex) { }
					catch (Exception ex) {
						// Log exception
					}
				}
			}
			disposed = true;         
		}
		~ServerNamedPipe() {
			Dispose(false);
		}
		internal ServerNamedPipe(string name, uint outBuffer, uint inBuffer, int maxReadBytes, bool secure) {
			PipeConnection = new ServerPipeConnection(name, outBuffer, inBuffer, maxReadBytes, secure);
			PipeThread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(PipeListener));
			PipeThread.IsBackground = true;
			PipeThread.Name = "Pipe Thread " + this.PipeConnection.NativeHandle.ToString();
			LastAction = DateTime.Now;
		}
	}
}

By viewing downloads associated with this article you agree to the Terms of Service and the article's licence.

If a file you wish to view isn't highlighted, and is a text file (not binary), please let us know and we'll add colourisation support for it.

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here


Written By
Web Developer
United Kingdom United Kingdom
Ivan Latunov is a Software Architect with long term commercial experience in the areas of software architecture and engineering, design and development of web and distributed applications and business and technical analysis. Technical blog. Website: ivanweb.com.

Comments and Discussions