Output Console.WriteLine from WPF Windows Applications to actual console

Question

Background: I am struggling to add command line and batch processing capabilities to an existing WPF Windows Application. When I detect some options at startup I su

Answer 1

A WPF application will not have a console by default, but you can easily create one for it and then write to it just like in a console app. I've used this helper class before:

public class ConsoleHelper
{
    /// 

    /// Allocates a new console for current process.
    /// 
    [DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
    public static extern Boolean AllocConsole();

    /// 

    /// Frees the console.
    /// 
    [DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
    public static extern Boolean FreeConsole();
}

To use this in your example, you should be able to do this:

namespace WpfConsoleTest
{
    public partial class App : Application
    {
        protected override void OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e)
        {
            ConsoleHelper.AllocConsole(); 
            Console.WriteLine("Start");
            System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000);
            Console.WriteLine("Stop");
            ConsoleHelper.FreeConsole();
            Shutdown(0);
        }
    }
}

And now, if you run it from the command line, you should see "Start" and "Stop" written to the console.