Capture console exit C#

c# .net events console exit
ZeroKelvin picture ZeroKelvin · Jan 23, 2009 · Viewed 88.6k times · Source

I have a console application that contains quite a lot of threads. There are threads that monitor certain conditions and terminate the program if they are true. This termination can happen at any time.

I need an event that can be triggered when the program is closing so that I can cleanup all of the other threads and close all file handles and connections properly. I'm not sure if there is one already built into the .NET framework, so I'm asking before I write my own.

I was wondering if there was an event along the lines of:

MyConsoleProgram.OnExit += CleanupBeforeExit;

Answer

flq picture flq · Jan 23, 2009

I am not sure where I found the code on the web, but I found it now in one of my old projects. This will allow you to do cleanup code in your console, e.g. when it is abruptly closed or due to a shutdown...

[DllImport("Kernel32")]
private static extern bool SetConsoleCtrlHandler(EventHandler handler, bool add);

private delegate bool EventHandler(CtrlType sig);
static EventHandler _handler;

enum CtrlType
{
  CTRL_C_EVENT = 0,
  CTRL_BREAK_EVENT = 1,
  CTRL_CLOSE_EVENT = 2,
  CTRL_LOGOFF_EVENT = 5,
  CTRL_SHUTDOWN_EVENT = 6
}

private static bool Handler(CtrlType sig)
{
  switch (sig)
  {
      case CtrlType.CTRL_C_EVENT:
      case CtrlType.CTRL_LOGOFF_EVENT:
      case CtrlType.CTRL_SHUTDOWN_EVENT:
      case CtrlType.CTRL_CLOSE_EVENT:
      default:
          return false;
  }
}


static void Main(string[] args)
{
  // Some biolerplate to react to close window event
  _handler += new EventHandler(Handler);
  SetConsoleCtrlHandler(_handler, true);
  ...
}

Update

For those not checking the comments it seems that this particular solution does not work well (or at all) on Windows 7. The following thread talks about this

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