Using Timers in a C# Windows Service

For the most part, writing a windows service in Visual Studio.net is only marginally different than writing a windows application.  You may have difficulty attempting to implement some components you’ve learned to rely on. One such component is the timer.

In a windows application, you simply drag a Timer from the Toolbox and implement as normal.  Curiously, you can do the same in a service–it just doesn’t work.  This is because the timer in the toolbox is located in System.Windows.Forms. So how do you do it? It’s really quite simple.

First, add the following line to the top of your Windows Service project:

using System.Timers;

Next, add this line to top of your class (the section starting with public partial class..)

Timer timer1= new Timer();

Obviously you may want to pick a more descriptive name…just be consistent. Next we need to create the method that will fire each time the timer reaches 0.  

private void timer1_Elapsed(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
      //Some awesome code!
}

Lastly, we need to bind this method to the timer’s elapsed event and finish implementing the timer.  Find your service’s OnStart() method and add something like:

timer1.Elapsed += new ElapsedEventHandler(timer1_Elapsed);
timer1.Interval = 5000;
timer1.Enabled = true;
timer1.Start();

The first line above tells the service to run timer1_Elapsed everytime the timer1.Elapsed event is raised. The second line sets the timer1′s interval to 5 seconds (1000 milliseconds = 1 second).  Lastly we enable the timer and start it.

You may want to add this to your OnStop() method for completeness:

timer1.Enabled = false;

That’s all there is to it.  This should be all you need to know to implement a timer in your service.