如何在显示窗口之前使WPF / MVVM应用程序进行后台处理？

Question

I'm fairly new to WPF & MVVM. I've created a couple standard simple WPF/MVVM applications that show a startup screen and do processing, including displaying other user controls, based on commands within that main window.

But now I want to make a WPF/MVVM monitoring/input-gathering application that starts up without displaying a window, loops through checking the system state until conditions necessitate the window's display, and only THEN displays a window, then processes the user input and goes back to looping. The user wouldn't be waiting for this window, because it's only shown when there's something that needs the user's attention. It would run in the background "forever", only showing itself when needed.

I see that I can make my own Main() method, but I still can't figure out the best way to keep it in MVVM, yet only display the window as needed within a larger loop.

Thanks!

EDIT - we finally did the sane thing and made two different processes, one to do the monitoring and one to do the WPFing. Thanks all!

Answer 1

A Windows Service seems to be the best way to do the monitoring. As soon as user interaction is needed you could signal the rest of the 'world' that something has occured.

A WPF client could pick up the signal and show a UI. The WPF client could be hidden by using a NotifyICon.

MVVM would only be appropriate in the WPF Client. The model contains the status that is monitored, the viewmodel turns this into a model of the view and the view displays the information.

The signal could be a Mutex that is set by the service and tested by the WPF client. Communication between the service and the client could be implemented by using WCF.