Open window designed in WPF from external exe and receive return values from methods

Question

Is there some "new/better" way to open a WPF window and get some return object when it closes than using COM?

Or is it still - in year 2014 - the way to go?

Something like this:

[Guid("14B55D90-E07B-4DC9-B2EE-25F15607518B")]
[ComVisible(true)]
public interface ComInterface
{
    [DispId(0)]
    void ShowWindow();
}

[Guid("CC01974D-82E2-4E9E-A48C-562D3ED83459")]
[ComVisible(true)]
[ClassInterface(ClassInterfaceType.None)]
[ComDefaultInterface(typeof(ComInterface))]

public class ComClass: ComInterface
{
    public void ShowWindow()
    {
        MainWPFWindow window = new MainWPFWindow();
        window.Show();
    }
}

Answer 1

What you are apparently looking for is inter-process communication. With .NET, you have various options, among the following:

• Windows messages (it boils down to SendMessage and handling these in WPF, or WM_COPYDATA if you need to transfer more data than just integers)
• Named pipes
• .NET remoting
• Other libraries built on top of these like XDMessaging

Here is another list for IPC methods: Interprocess Communications