I created a new ASP.NET Core project with Visual Studio 2022 Preview and I am trying to run it as a Windows Service. I downloaded the latest Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.WindowsServices package (6.0.0-preview.7.21377.19).
When researching online the function .UseWindowsService() goes into CreateHostBuilder method. But in the new template it looks different. I cannot understand where I should call .UseWindowsService in the new template. This is my current code, it looks like the service is starting but then when I browse to localhost:5000 it gives me 404 error
using Microsoft.OpenApi.Models;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.WindowsServices;
var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
builder.Host.UseWindowsService(); // <--- Added this line
// Add services to the container.
builder.Services.AddControllers();
builder.Services.AddSwaggerGen(c =>
{
c.SwaggerDoc("v1", new() { Title = "MyWindowsService", Version = "v1" });
});
var app = builder.Build();
// Configure the HTTP request pipeline.
if (builder.Environment.IsDevelopment())
{
app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
app.UseSwagger();
app.UseSwaggerUI(c => c.SwaggerEndpoint("/swagger/v1/swagger.json", "MyWindowsService v1"));
}
app.UseAuthorization();
app.MapControllers();
app.Run();
I published my service exe like this
dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained
The following coding sets the lifetime to WindowsServiceLifetime and enables logging to the event log. In most cases this should be all you need to run the app as a Windows Service.
if (WindowsServiceHelpers.IsWindowsService())
{
appBuilder.Services.AddSingleton<IHostLifetime, WindowsServiceLifetime>();
appBuilder.Logging.AddEventLog(settings =>
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(settings.SourceName))
{
settings.SourceName = appBuilder.Environment.ApplicationName;
}
});
}
Since simply using
builder.Host.UseWindowsService();
will not work with WebApplication.CreateBuilder() (see), but instead will throw the exception
Exception Info: System.NotSupportedException: The content root changed from "C:\Windows\system32\" to "...". Changing the host configuration using WebApplicationBuilder.Host is not supported. Use WebApplication.CreateBuilder(WebApplicationOptions) instead.
or rather will cause this error
Start-Service : Service 'Service1 (Service1)' cannot be started due to the following error: Cannot start service Service1 on computer '.'.
when trying to start the Service with Start-Service in PowerShell, I found a workaround that worked for me
using Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.WindowsServices;
var options = new WebApplicationOptions
{
Args = args,
ContentRootPath = WindowsServiceHelpers.IsWindowsService() ? AppContext.BaseDirectory : default
};
var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(options);
builder.Host.UseWindowsService();