How might I schedule a C# Windows Service to perform a task daily?

ctrlalt3nd picture ctrlalt3nd · Feb 2, 2009 · Viewed 161.5k times · Source

I have a service written in C# (.NET 1.1) and want it to perform some cleanup actions at midnight every night. I have to keep all code contained within the service, so what's the easiest way to accomplish this? Use of Thread.Sleep() and checking for the time rolling over?

Answer

M4N picture M4N · Feb 2, 2009

I wouldn't use Thread.Sleep(). Either use a scheduled task (as others have mentioned), or set up a timer inside your service, which fires periodically (every 10 minutes for example) and check if the date changed since the last run:

private Timer _timer;
private DateTime _lastRun = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-1);

protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
{
    _timer = new Timer(10 * 60 * 1000); // every 10 minutes
    _timer.Elapsed += new System.Timers.ElapsedEventHandler(timer_Elapsed);
    _timer.Start();
    //...
}


private void timer_Elapsed(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
    // ignore the time, just compare the date
    if (_lastRun.Date < DateTime.Now.Date)
    {
        // stop the timer while we are running the cleanup task
        _timer.Stop();
        //
        // do cleanup stuff
        //
        _lastRun = DateTime.Now;
        _timer.Start();
    }
}