C#/.NET: Detect whether program is being run as a service or a console application [duplicate]

Answer 1

Rasmus, this is the earlier question.

From the answers it seems the most popular way is to use a simple command line option, or try accessing the Console object in a try catch block (in a Service the Console is not attached to the process and trying to access it throws an exception).

Or if you're having trouble testing/debugging the service, move code into a separate dll assembly and create a seprate test harness (winforms/console etc).

(Just noticed that Jonathan has added his solution to the end of the question.)

Answer 2

[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
static extern IntPtr GetStdHandle(int nStdHandle);
const int STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE = -11;

IntPtr iStdOut = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);

if (iStdOut == IntPtr.Zero)

{    
    app.RunAsWindowsService = true;

}

// Run as Service
if (runAsWindowsService)                                
{
     // .....
     ServiceBase.Run(myService);
}
else 
{
    // Run as Console
    // Register Ctrl+C Handler...
}