Run Multiple Tasks in a Windows Service

ServicesBase.Run(ServiceBase[] services) ...that sure made me think you could run multiple implementations of ServiceBase in a single Windows Service; but that is not how it works.

One Service, Multiple Tasks

I often have a very simple use case: I needed to run multiple tasks in a single windows service. For example, one task to poll some email notifications, and one task to listen to HTTP requests that might trigger those same notifications.

I like the basic setup of OnStart, Run, and OnStop, but after authoring several windows services I got tired of writing the same code over and over again. Thus I created the WindowServiceTasks library. Now whenever I need to do another task in a service, I just implement the WindowsServiceTaskBase or WindowsServiceLoopBase class, and my code is all ready to go!

WindowsServiceTasks

Run multiple tasks in a single WindowsService, and let the base library do all of the work setup and tear down for you. The WindowsServiceTasks NuGet package is simple, flexible, and extremely light weight.

• NuGet Package
• Source on GitHub

Example

public static class Program

{

    public static void Main(params string[] args)

    {

        var logger = new Logger("Demo.log");

        var emailTask = new EmailServiceTask(logger);

        var failTask = new FailServiceTask(logger);

        var service = new Service1(logger, emailTask, failTask);

        service.Start(args);

    }

}

public class EmailServiceTask : WindowsServiceLoopBase

{

    private readonly ILogger _logger;

    public EmailServiceTask(ILogger logger)

    {

        _logger = logger;

    }

    protected override int LoopMilliseconds

    {

        get { return 2000; }

    }

    protected override void HandleException(Exception exception)

    {

        _logger.Log(exception);

    }

    protected override void RunLoop()

    {

        // TODO Send Email!

        _logger.Log("EmailServiceTask.RunLoop - Sending an email");

    }

    public override void OnStart(string[] args)

    {

        _logger.Log("EmailServiceTask.OnStart");

    }

    public override void OnStop()

    {

        _logger.Log("EmailServiceTask.OnStop");

    }

    protected override void DisposeResources()

    {

    }

}

Enjoy,
Tom