C# windows service question

Question

I am a web developer who has not worked with windows development for many years. I suddenly have to change a windows service. The windows service reads EDI files. I want to check for the existence of a row in a SQL table at the beginning of the code. If the row does not exist then I want to stop processing the current EDI file and move on to the next file. I already have the code to check for the existence of the row. My question is: Is there an easy way to end processing of this file and move on the next file?

Wim Sturkenboom · Answer

If the code is poorly written you might be better of rewriting it Personally I always find my own code poorly written because I often code too linear and the code does not 'jump' from method to method Assuming that your code is basically single threaded (only processing one file at a time) you can keep a bool in the Program class to indicate if you want to continue. static class Program { public static bool WantToBailout=false; static void Main() { You can set and check this everywhere in the existing code private void someMethod() { if(Program.WantToBailout) return; // normal processing ... ... if(!rowcheck()) { Program.WantToBailout=true; return; } } private void anotherMethod() { if(Program.WantToBailout) return; someMethod(); if(Program.WantToBailout) return; ... ... } But this is really bad programming making poorly written code even worse.

Bob Herrmann · Answer

The code in the windows service is poorly written. The code jumps all over the place. It's not simple like in your example. I was hoping there was a way to stop processing the current file and start with the next. Like I posted earlier I'm not really a windows developer. My other alternative is to check if the row does not exist and then persist this value to all the chunks of code that execute. Maybe some can help show me how to do this.

Wim Sturkenboom · Answer

Your description of the process is not quite clear. But maybe this helps you on the way. // list of files to process string[] files = .....; // process all files for(int cnt=0;cnt { // your sql processing if(!checkrowexists()) continue; // your file processing processEditFile(); } This could be the basic framework; notice the use of continue .