Gabe's Code
Stuff I've learned along the way
.NET: Create a basic HttpListener web service
Sometimes you need to run tasks in the background, which is a job well-suited for Windows services; they’re designed to stay running all the time. However, you will often want some kind of front-end to monitor what the service is doing. If your Windows service writes to a database, then you can use that: your front-end can just read from the database. But if not, you will want your front end to be able to communicate with your service directly.
You could build some kind of custom way of communicating, but web services are well-known and easy to work with from any front-end application. The .NET Framework does provide a class to create your own web server: HttpListener. It’s handy, but you do have to construct every HTTP response from scratch, which is different than writing something in ASP.NET, for example.
In this example, I’ll show you how to use that to create a simple web service in any application (like a Windows service) so other applications can communicated with it.
Caveat
Note that this example does not provide any authentication mechanism. It listens on localhost, so if your front-end is running on the same server, then this should work just fine as long as the port you use for this is not exposed to the internet. Otherwise, you will have to implement some kind of authentication. It should be easy enough to inspect the HTTP header for an API key, for example.
What does it do?
In this example, the service will either return its current settings via GET http://localhost:8888/settings, or accept new settings via PUT http://localhost:8888/settings. Otherwise it will return an HTTP 404 response.
How to use
To use this, call WebService.StartWebServer() when your application starts, and WebService.StopWebServer() to shut it down gracefully. The StopWebServer() method is written so that, if it happens to be currently processing a request, it will wait until it is done rather than kill it.
using Newtonsoft.Json;
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
namespace MyService {
internal static class WebService {
/// <summary>
/// The port the HttpListener should listen on
/// </summary>
private const int Port = 8888;
/// <summary>
/// This is the heart of the web server
/// </summary>
private static readonly HttpListener Listener = new HttpListener { Prefixes = { $"http://localhost:{Port}/" } };
/// <summary>
/// A flag to specify when we need to stop
/// </summary>
private static volatile bool _keepGoing = true;
/// <summary>
/// Keep the task in a static variable to keep it alive
/// </summary>
private static Task _mainLoop;
/// <summary>
/// Call this to start the web server
/// </summary>
public static void StartWebServer() {
if (_mainLoop != null && !_mainLoop.IsCompleted) return; //Already started
_mainLoop = MainLoop();
}
/// <summary>
/// Call this to stop the web server. It will not kill any requests currently being processed.
/// </summary>
public static void StopWebServer() {
_keepGoing = false;
lock (Listener) {
//Use a lock so we don't kill a request that's currently being processed
Listener.Stop();
}
try {
_mainLoop.Wait();
} catch { /* je ne care pas */ }
}
/// <summary>
/// The main loop to handle requests into the HttpListener
/// </summary>
/// <returns></returns>
private static async Task MainLoop() {
Listener.Start();
while (_keepGoing) {
try {
//GetContextAsync() returns when a new request come in
var context = await Listener.GetContextAsync();
lock (Listener) {
if (_keepGoing) ProcessRequest(context);
}
} catch (Exception e) {
if (e is HttpListenerException) return; //this gets thrown when the listener is stopped
//TODO: Log the exception
}
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Handle an incoming request
/// </summary>
/// <param name="context">The context of the incoming request</param>
private static void ProcessRequest(HttpListenerContext context) {
using (var response = context.Response) {
try {
var handled = false;
switch (context.Request.Url.AbsolutePath) {
//This is where we do different things depending on the URL
//TODO: Add cases for each URL we want to respond to
case "/settings":
switch (context.Request.HttpMethod) {
case "GET":
//Get the current settings
response.ContentType = "application/json";
//This is what we want to send back
var responseBody = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(MyApplicationSettings);
//Write it to the response stream
var buffer = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(responseBody);
response.ContentLength64 = buffer.Length;
response.OutputStream.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
handled = true;
break;
case "PUT":
//Update the settings
using (var body = context.Request.InputStream)
using (var reader = new StreamReader(body, context.Request.ContentEncoding)) {
//Get the data that was sent to us
var json = reader.ReadToEnd();
//Use it to update our settings
UpdateSettings(JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<MySettings>(json));
//Return 204 No Content to say we did it successfully
response.StatusCode = 204;
handled = true;
}
break;
}
break;
}
if (!handled) {
response.StatusCode = 404;
}
} catch (Exception e) {
//Return the exception details the client - you may or may not want to do this
response.StatusCode = 500;
response.ContentType = "application/json";
var buffer = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(e));
response.ContentLength64 = buffer.Length;
response.OutputStream.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
//TODO: Log the exception
}
}
}
private static void UpdateSettings(MySettings newSettings) {
//TODO: Update application settings
}
}
}
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