Determine whether the class library is called from a windows based application

Question

This is based on C#. I am having a classlibrary in which I would like to know specifically if its being called from a windows based application

I searched a lot but all I found was code to know if it was called from a Console application. I only want to know if its called from a windows based application or not

Please Help

Answer 1

If you want to know whether the application is running as a service or system app and thus cannot display a dialogue, test the state of Environment.UserInteractive.

There is no easy way to determine if the application is a windows or cmd-based application. For example, I might build a winforms-based application that doesn't create a window and instead runs as command-line style application by not opening a window.

Two (not necessarily reliable) ways of testing if it's a windows-based app would be to test Application.OpenForms (if it contains forms, then it's a windows app) or Environment.GetCommandLineArgs() (if 0 args, assume it's a windows app).

If you absolutely need to know whether the app is a console or windows one, then you need to step out of the world of managed code and start delving into the exe file using unmanaged C++ code. There is just one byte difference between the two in the PE header of the exe file: Subsystem is set to 2 for a windows app and 3 for a cmd app. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms809762.aspx and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/90493/en-us for details if you really want to do this.