How do I know if my app was opened from console or windows in C#

Question

I have an application that is both gui and console.

Console: It executes from a windows schedule to do some automated tasks, so its called with an argument

GUI: Used for entering config parameters, a much nicer way for the user to do this than console.

All this works great. its primarily a console app, the console is hidden if its opened with no arguments and the configuration form is shown.

Problem: If I open it FROM the console with NO arguments, the console is hidden and the form is shown. how can i detect what or where i opened the app from, if it was opened from windows then hide the console, if it was opened from console then leave the console shown.

Answer 1

If you really want to know "where" your application has been started you have to know what is your parent process. In order to know your parent process you can read the solution of How to get parent process in .NET in managed way

Then you can for example check if your parent process name is explorer(windows) to open your application as a GUI.

sample code based on the solution provided in How to get parent process in .NET in managed way

namespace ConsoleApp1
{
    public static class ProcessExtensions
    {
        private static string FindIndexedProcessName(int pid)
        {
            var processName = Process.GetProcessById(pid).ProcessName;
            var processesByName = Process.GetProcessesByName(processName);
            string processIndexdName = null;

            for (var index = 0; index < processesByName.Length; index++)
            {
                processIndexdName = index == 0 ? processName : processName + "#" + index;
                var processId = new PerformanceCounter("Process", "ID Process", processIndexdName);
                if ((int)processId.NextValue() == pid)
                {
                    return processIndexdName;
                }
            }

            return processIndexdName;
        }
        private static Process FindPidFromIndexedProcessName(string indexedProcessName)
        {
            var parentId = new PerformanceCounter("Process", "Creating Process ID", indexedProcessName);
            return Process.GetProcessById((int)parentId.NextValue());
        }

        public static Process Parent(this Process process)
        {
            return FindPidFromIndexedProcessName(FindIndexedProcessName(process.Id));
        }
    }


    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(Process.GetCurrentProcess().Parent().ProcessName);
            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

This code will outputs:

• debug in visual studio: devenv
• start from windows: explorer
• start from cmd: cmd
• start from powershell console: powershell
• ...