how to run a winform from console application?

Question

How do I create, execute and control a winform from within a console application?

Answer 1

The easiest option is to start a windows forms project, then change the output-type to Console Application. Alternatively, just add a reference to System.Windows.Forms.dll, and start coding:

using System.Windows.Forms;  [STAThread] static void Main() {     Application.EnableVisualStyles();     Application.Run(new Form()); // or whatever } 

The important bit is the [STAThread] on your Main() method, required for full COM support.

Answer 2

I recently wanted to do this and found that I was not happy with any of the answers here.

If you follow Marc's advice and set the output-type to Console Application there are two problems:

1) If you launch the application from Explorer, you get an annoying console window behind your Form which doesn't go away until your program exits. We can mitigate this problem by calling FreeConsole prior to showing the GUI (Application.Run). The annoyance here is that the console window still appears. It immediately goes away, but is there for a moment none-the-less.

2) If you launch it from a console, and display a GUI, the console is blocked until the GUI exits. This is because the console (cmd.exe) thinks it should launch Console apps synchronously and Windows apps asynchronously (the unix equivalent of "myprocess &").

If you leave the output-type as Windows Application, but correctly call AttachConsole, you don't get a second console window when invoked from a console and you don't get the unnecessary console when invoked from Explorer. The correct way to call AttachConsole is to pass -1 to it. This causes our process to attach to the console of our parent process (the console window that launched us).

However, this has two different problems:

1) Because the console launches Windows apps in the background, it immediately displays the prompt and allows further input. On the one hand this is good news, the console is not blocked on your GUI app, but in the case where you want to dump output to the console and never show the GUI, your program's output comes after the prompt and no new prompt is displayed when you're done. This looks a bit confusing, not to mention that your "console app" is running in the background and the user is free to execute other commands while it's running.

2) Stream redirection gets messed up as well, e.g. "myapp some parameters > somefile" fails to redirect. The stream redirection problem requires a significant amount of p/Invoke to fixup the standard handles, but it is solvable.

After many hours of hunting and experimenting, I've come to the conclusion that there is no way to do this perfectly. You simply cannot get all the benefits of both console and window without any side effects. It's a matter of picking which side effects are least annoying for your application's purposes.