CSNamedPipes is a demo application that implements interprocess communication (IPC) using Named Pipes in C#.
A fork of Patrick Wyatt - CSNamedPipes, the original code didn't include an obvious way of doing bi-directional communication between two processes.
Both the Client and Server will wait for messages and can send message to each other asynchronously until Stop() is called.
Not sure if I would've been better with Socket instead, I failed using WM_COPYDATA at first and stumbled upon this which seems pretty lightweight (I only need to send a few messages between a Unity App and a Windows App for Notessimo).
var server = new IpcServer("ExamplePipeName");
server.Connected += id => Console.WriteLine($"Connected {id}");
server.Disconnected += id => Console.WriteLine($"Disconnected ({id})");
server.Message += (id, message) => Console.WriteLine($"Message Received ({id}): {message}");
server.Connect();
Thread.Sleep(5000);
server.Send("Server 1");
Thread.Sleep(1000);
server.Stop();
Console.WriteLine("End");var client = new IpcClient("ExamplePipeName");
client.Connected += () => Console.WriteLine("Connected");
client.Disconnected += () => Console.WriteLine("Disconnected");
client.Message += message => Console.WriteLine($"Message Received: {message}");
client.Connect();
Thread.Sleep(1000);
client.Send("Client 1");
Thread.Sleep(10000);
client.Stop();
Console.WriteLine("End");I needed a library to implement interprocess communication so that I could write a desktop application communicate with a Windows Service application. I thought I'd find some simple code on the Internet, but two things were missing:
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Most of the code samples I ran across used synchronous (blocking) communication, which requires one thread per named pipe. My background is writing massive-scale Internet services like battle.net, and online games like Starcraft and Guild Wars, which would totally fall over using synchronous sockets/pipes. So async it is!
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Google for "How to detect a client disconnect using a named pipe" and you'll get 430000 hits. I wanted to make sure my program solved this problem.
For more details about the solutions to these problems, you can read the code or check out my blog article Detect client disconnects using named-pipes in C#.
I am glad to answer questions about this project.
MIT License, which basically means you can do whatever you want with the code (even use it commercially with no fee) but don't blame me if something bad happens.