Writing a windows service with a socket interface.

From: Peter Strĝiman (blah_at_blahblahblah)
Date: 02/17/05 

Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 11:04:41 +0100

Hi.

I'm writing a windows service that is accessible via sockets. I have tried
to find literature on the subject but I couldn't.

Basically my service, when asked to start, starts up a new thread that just
waits for connection. See bottom of this mail.

The StreamParser class is the facade that parses data sent to my service,
and sends a response back to the client.

I'm left with a couple of questions.

A: Are there any good resources on writing windows services with socket
interfaces anywhere?

B: Is my main code robust. E.g. if some idiot accidentally pulled the
network cable out of the server, would _listener.AcceptTcpClient() throw an
exception. Or perhaps if the IP address of the server was modified while the
service was running.

C: When a client connects and sends a request and thereafter gets a
response, should I close the socket, or keep the socket open. I'm writing
the class that handles the client's communication with the server as well,
so I can control these things. If the best option is to leave the connection
open, I would implement a sort of connection pool of course.

D: How should I detect if clients are disconnected? My StreamParser
implementation simply calls the blocking Stream.Read() method, waiting for
data to arrive. Can I count on that the stream throws an IOException if the
client is disconnected? E.g. if the network cable is unplugged (either from
the server or client), someone changes the IP address of the server/client,
or the client process suddenly terminates. Of course I would implement a
"close" command in my communication protocal that would manually close a
connection.

Thanks in advance,
Peter Strĝiman

// service main thread
try
{
  _listener = new TcpListener( _ipEndPoint );
  _listener.Start();
  _state = TcpInterfaceState.Running;
  while( true )
  {
  TcpClient client = _listener.AcceptTcpClient();
  if ( client != null )
  {
    Stream stream = client.GetStream();
    StreamParser parser = new StreamParser( stream );
    Thread thread = new Thread( new ThreadStart( parser.Run ) );
    thread.ApartmentState = ApartmentState.STA;
    thread.Start();
  }
}
}
catch( Exception e )
{
  // error handling code
}

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