Support running as a Windows service

[blackwind]

Like #58, it's only a matter of time until the requests for this start pouring in, so I'm creating an issue now to house the discussion. Unlike #58, I have no real opinion one way or the other at this time, but @kdschlosser has apparently done considerable research and will explain below why it's a bad idea.

[kdschlosser]

OK, So here goes for this very long winded explanation of why you will never see EG (EventGhost) as a service.

Upon booting a computer you are left at a windows logon screen. Because EG is so dependent on the Windows GUI for an extremely large portion of it's abilities the GUI doesn't actually run until you login. So having a service that starts before the GUI is even loaded would make a very large portion of EG not function. That being said I do know you can do an Auto Login, Well at that point you may as well have EG run in Hidden Mode upon logon. This can be accomplished using the windows task scheduler or by adding a custom shortcut with the -h option specified.

But since we have the GUI loaded you still cannot have EG run as a service because a service is not allowed to interact with a User (GUI). This was put into place in Windows Vista. The interact with desktop option that is located in the properties of a service actually does nothing in a way that would allow EG to be a service.

There is one it could possibly work, but if not really worth the recode of EG to find out. It's called Interactive Service, but you would have to disable fast user switching and you would only be able to interact with EG from a console(Terminal 0) session and you would have to have the Service run in the console session.

The Windows Session you are currently logged into is not for lack of better words the "real" desktop. but in fact it is a Remote Desktop Session, Crazy huh? There is a special way to log into a console session. And you would also not be able to use any kind of remote desktop. And even with all this accomplished there are things that would still not function properly in EG because EG has a hidden window that runs and collects various data from the GUI and This also poses some limitations and problems of it's own.

So the end result is, set your computer up for Auto Login and run EG with the -h option or run minimized. And that's all there is to it.

[kdschlosser]

This is going to be a long and difficult process to tackle because of the above mentioned mechanisms that handle windows messages. some of these things can be handled internally by the service. But windows message for things like the clipboard can only be done through the use of a frame to receive the messages.

So EG would have to be split into 2 pieces. the service and a GUI.

I have already gotten EG to run as a service with wx completely removed form it. I am able to connect to EG over a websocket connection that i coded into it. I could trigger events. and see events getting triggered. Running EG is something we can do. it will take some time.

I think the easiest solution is going to be implementing the magic methods getinitargs, getnewargs, getstate, setstate, reduce and finally reduce_ex. these methods would allow us to serialize python objects so they can be sent over a socket connection or similiar. This is going to make it easier to send any of the TreeItem and EventGhostEvent instances to a client GUI to be displayed. we would need to make a class for a log entry but that is not to difficult to do.

and removed wontfix labels on Oct 27, 2018
and removed wontfix labels on Oct 27, 2018
and removed wontfix labels on Oct 27, 2018

[kdschlosser]

I have actually been working on this lately. It's a pretty massive undertaking because of how woven into EG the GUI bits are.

I have decided to go an odd kind of a route. I have ported the DOM (Document Object Model), HTML DOM as well as the CSSOM (CSS Object Model) to python. This is the backbone of being able to create HTML and CSS code dynamically. I kept the verbage the same as what is used in javascript. So it will be very easy to understand by any web developer if they decide to help out or want to change up the code.

I am able to facilitate 2 way communications all over a single port using the HTTP protocol by use GET POST PUT PATCH and DELETE methods. The whole system does not rely on a single template file. It can all be done from inside of python. No need to have any html, css or even js files. The page gets made at the time an object gets clicked on.

Now here is the cool part. I am weaving this into wxPython which is the portion that creas the GUI in windows. So If all goes correctly there will be very little (if any) changes to any of the current API. everything should function exactly how it does right now just have to add a single import that will wrap all of the wxPython bits.

[mkanet]

Any progress on this? EventGhost is the only application left on my server that doesn't run as a service.

[kdschlosser]

There has been. I am able to run EventGhost as a service but in order to do it either a standalone application needs to be made to handle the GUI aspects or completely new web GUI needs to be constructed. It is not an easy task i will tell you that. It may be better to start completely from scratch in order to do it. The reason why is EG could also be made to be cross platform at the same time.
The majority of the issue with running EG as a service is it's ability to interact with the Windows Desktop these abilities would need to be stripped out of EG because a Windows service is not allowed to interact with the desktop (directly)

[mkanet]

Thank you so much for the quick reply. I don't mind losing access to the GUI as long as everything else works correctly. It's extremely rare that I need to do something in the GUI.

Do you mind telling me the easiest way to run it as a service?

[kdschlosser]

as i said.. it is not an easy thing to do and requires a massive code change to EG in order to do it.

[mkanet]

Thanks anyway. I noticed there were people who were able to get EventGhost to run as a service (without GUI access) in the link below. However, I couldn't get it to work; at least, not with PsExec. Maybe the code has changed significantly since then:

http://eventghost.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2210

[ThomasBott]

@mkanet
I run EG via a scheduled task on startup. Works nicely! (As long as you don't need the UI of course)
That's of course not a real service then, but the functionality you get is almost the same and it's kinda simple to set it up.