how to convert my C# winform program to service program?

Question

how to convert my C# winform program to service program ?

i need that my program will work like service (like listener)

Answer 1

As Darin already pointed out converting a UI application into a Windows service is in most cases not a good idea.

This being said, there maybe (or are) edge cases where this can be useful.
I've so far not tried to do it with a WinForms application, but I assume that the steps are almost identical to what I once did.
I wrote a backend application, that runs as a Windows service 99.99% of the time, but can also be started as a console application for easier / faster debugging.

What you've got to do:

• prevent the application from spawning multiple instances (optional; see this article on how to achieve this)
• make sure your application does not rely on user interaction
• upon startup of the application, check whether it is run as Windows service or in user mode

---

You can detect if the user started the application by querying Environment.UserInteractive - which returns false, if started as Windows service, and true when started in user mode.

your main method should then look something like this:

    static void Main()
    {
        // do common initialization, logging framework + the likes

        if (Environment.UserInteractive)
        {
            // start up in user mode
            Application.EnableVisualStyles();
            Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
            Application.Run(new myForm());
        }
        else
        {
            // start up as Windows service
            ServiceBase[] ServicesToRun;
            ServicesToRun = new ServiceBase[] 
            { 
                new myService() 
            };
            ServiceBase.Run(ServicesToRun);
        }
    }

Answer 2

A windows service doesn't have a GUI, so the sole notion of talking about converting a WinForms application with a GUI to a Windows service hardly makes sense. You may take a look at the following article about writing windows services using .NET. If you need to host some sevrice listening on a given port you may take a look at hosting a WCF service in a managed Windows service.