Sending Messages between Services in C#

Question

I have 2 Windows services written on .NET 4.5.1. I am looking to see if there is functionality like WinAPI's SendMessage(IntPtr hwnd, uint Msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam) call that i can use for a GUI-less process like a windows service!

Thanks!

Answer 1

When two processes need to communicate, they do so using one of any number of inter-process communication (IPC) mechanisms. The answers to this SO post give you a few ideas of the possibilities. To this I would add WCF, which is the Microsoft-recommended way of having two .NET-based applications talk to one another.

Personally, I choose sockets for this kind of thing, but it really does come down to your particular situation and your comfort level.

HTH

Answer 2

You can use Named pipes. See here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.pipes(v=vs.110).aspx for more details.