• ServiceState

ServiceState: interface between SCM and APL

(Show (Hide table-of-contents) table-of-contents)

ServiceState is part of the CategoryAplTree project.

Overview

ServiceState is a namespace script that offers an interface between the Windows SCM (Service Control Manager) and a Dyalog APL application running as a service.

In you application workspace you need to have a function on ⎕LX similar to this:

      Start;ps
[1]      ps←#.ServiceState.CreateParmSpace
[2]      ps.ride←1
[3]      #.ServiceState.Init ps
[4]   :If #.ServiceState.IsRunningAsService
[5]      {#.TestService.Run ⍵}&⍬
[6]      ⎕DQ'.'
[7]     #.TestService.Off
[8]  :Else
[9]     #.TestService.Run ⍬
[10] :EndIf

Note that this example focuses on getting the application running as a service. For the purpose of demonstrating how to overwrite defaults (no RIDE) it shows how to create a parameter space with default settings (line [1]) and then overwrite a setting (line [2]).

If you are happy with the defaults (which you can check by executing #.ServiceState.CreateParmSpace.∆List) then you can specify ⍬ as the right argument of #.ServiceState.Init in line [3].

Remarks:

[4]: Checks whether the application is actually running as a Windows Service. This allows to execute the application in its own thread in case its running as a service but not otherwise - that makes debugging the application significantly easier.

[5]: Here we start the real application. Note that this must run in its own thread because otherwise the application might well become unresponsive.

[6]: We need to execute ⎕DQ '.' in order to make sure that the interpreter processes all events.

[7]: At this stage we need to execute ⎕OFF; that's what #.TestService.Off is doing.

The application

The application must make sure in its main loop that it checks for state changes, and act accordingly. This is all done by the Operator #.ServiceState.CheckServiceMessages which takes the name of a logging function as operand:

  MainLoop dummmy;buffer;data;event;obj;rc;r;msg;cs
[1]   :Repeat
[2]       ⎕DL 1                     ⍝ What is reasonable here depends on the application
[3]       :If (Log #.ServiceState.CheckServiceMessages)#.ServiceState.IsRunningAsService
[4]           Log'The service is in the process of shutting down...'
[5]           :Leave
[6]       :EndIf
[7]   :Until 0

Remarks:

Line [3] checks for any changes signalled from the Service Control Manager (SCM). If a "Pause" is detected, then the function loops until either a "Continue" or a "Stop" is detected. The explicit result is 1 in case a "Stop" is detected and 0 otherwise.

CategoryAplTree