Polling Service - C#

Question

Will anobody be able to help me?

I am creating a windows service that connects to a sql database and checks a date in the table and compares it to todays date and up

Answer 1

Set Timer.AutoReset = true. otherwise it will do its work only one time. but it's better to work with threading in windows services.

[edit] ah, yes. autoreset is true in default. I put this too in my code: GC.KeepAlive( myTimer ); so the gc won't remove it if it is inactive.

Answer 2

Another way of doing this would be to wait on an event rather then using a timer.

i.e.

    public class PollingService
    {
        private Thread _workerThread;
        private AutoResetEvent _finished;
        private const int _timeout = 60*1000;

        public void StartPolling()
        {
            _workerThread = new Thread(Poll);
            _finished = new AutoResetEvent(false);
            _workerThread.Start();
        }

        private void Poll()
        {
            while (!_finished.WaitOne(_timeout))
            {
                //do the task
            }
        }

        public void StopPolling()
        {
            _finished.Set();
            _workerThread.Join();
        }
    }

In your Service

    public partial class Service1 : ServiceBase
    {
        private readonly PollingService _pollingService = new PollingService();
        public Service1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
        {
            _pollingService.StartPolling();
        }

        protected override void OnStop()
        {
            _pollingService.StopPolling();
        }

    }