How to spawn a process and capture its STDOUT in .NET?

Jonathan_Holland_1965 0
Viewed 139110

I need to spawn a child process that is a console application, and capture its output.

I wrote up the following code for a method:

string retMessage = String.Empty;
ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
Process p = new Process();

startInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
startInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
startInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;

startInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
startInfo.Arguments = command;
startInfo.FileName = exec;

p.StartInfo = startInfo;
p.Start();

p.OutputDataReceived += new DataReceivedEventHandler
(
    delegate(object sender, DataReceivedEventArgs e)
    {
        using (StreamReader output = p.StandardOutput)
        {
            retMessage = output.ReadToEnd();
        }
    }
);

p.WaitForExit();

return retMessage;

However, this does not return anything. I don't believe the OutputDataReceived event is being called back, or the WaitForExit() command may be blocking the thread so it will never callback.

Any advice?

EDIT: Looks like I was trying too hard with the callback. Doing:

return p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();

Appears to work fine.

spawning process .net c#
9 Answers

Here's code that I've verified to work. I use it for spawning MSBuild and listening to its output:

process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
process.OutputDataReceived += (sender, args) => Console.WriteLine("received output: {0}", args.Data);
process.Start();
process.BeginOutputReadLine();
Judah_Himango_5360

I just tried this very thing and the following worked for me:

StringBuilder outputBuilder;
ProcessStartInfo processStartInfo;
Process process;

outputBuilder = new StringBuilder();

processStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
processStartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
processStartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
processStartInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;
processStartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
processStartInfo.Arguments = "<insert command line arguments here>";
processStartInfo.FileName = "<insert tool path here>";

process = new Process();
process.StartInfo = processStartInfo;
// enable raising events because Process does not raise events by default
process.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
// attach the event handler for OutputDataReceived before starting the process
process.OutputDataReceived += new DataReceivedEventHandler
(
    delegate(object sender, DataReceivedEventArgs e)
    {
        // append the new data to the data already read-in
        outputBuilder.Append(e.Data);
    }
);
// start the process
// then begin asynchronously reading the output
// then wait for the process to exit
// then cancel asynchronously reading the output
process.Start();
process.BeginOutputReadLine();
process.WaitForExit();
process.CancelOutputRead();

// use the output
string output = outputBuilder.ToString();
user_1517420

It looks like two of your lines are out of order. You start the process before setting up an event handler to capture the output. It's possible the process is just finishing before the event handler is added.

Switch the lines like so.

p.OutputDataReceived += ...
p.Start();
JaredPar_232830

You need to call p.Start() to actually run the process after you set the StartInfo. As it is, your function is probably hanging on the WaitForExit() call because the process was never actually started.

SoapBox_363840
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