running external console app. which requires input

Question

hi I hope someone can help me out here.... I am running a windows console application from within a windows form. The only thing is that once the program is run it requires additional input. I know how the actual running of the application is done i.e. System.Diagnostics.Process etc. for example if the console application I want to run is called echoMyInput.exe (which takes in my input and after a carriage return outputs it) then... if echoMyInput.exe is run from within the windows form the console is waiting for my user input+CR before it can continue. My question: is there a way to pass input to the console application while it is running OR would calling echoMuInput.exe from within a batch file be of any advantage? thanks all in advance for any info... mausy

chi · Answer

hey again Mike I have spent the last while searching for something that does the same as the app I mentioned in my previous post and discovered that it is a common enough action i.e. downloading at web form and posting it data in a response....so called datamining apparently. Anyway after doing a search for similar functionality in C# I have resolved to using System.Net.WebClient and its siblings....hopefully success is on the horizon. once again thanks for the help mausy

chi · Answer

cheers for the reply mike although I think I will have to give up on it. It would be nice if I could develop the console application in c#...only thing is I don't know where to start...so I'll just ask you as a start.. first off the existing console application is a prog that utilizes a free web sms service. It is called o2sms (if you are based in europe you might have heard of it). Vodafone and O2 are two mobile phone networks in ireland which offer 250-300 free web texts per month once you sign up with them. The console application automatically goes to the site logs in with your username and password and sends an sms. The application was originally developed in PERL...the source is freely available at http://www.mackers.com/projects/o2sms/o2sms.txt But I unfortunately haven't a clue of perl...and despite trying to decipher the code I keep getting lost. I am therefore hoping in my desperation that perhaps someone (maybe you) have dabbled in PERL and could give me an overview of what the script does and subsequently I could go and try the same in C#.....if not I shall post to a PERL forum which would of course (now that I think of it) be the more obvious solution....although if I did and told them my intentions of trying to port the application to a C# application I'm afraid I might get *flamed*!! doh! anyway thanks again for your help and *fingers crossed* you can advise! mausy

jcity444 · Answer

I think you can pass it arguements that would get parsed in the main when you initially run the app. If you want to pass arguements while its running I'm not sure how to do that unless its a windows app. You can always mimic a console application with a windows application :) -Mike