In almost all projects I’ve worked there was always a need for scheduled background jobs. Windows Services are well-suited for the job but when it comes to deployment and debugging they fall short. This is where TopShelf comes to rescue!

TopShelf in action

With TopShelf all you need to do is create a Console Application as your Windows Service and initialize TopShelf in the Main method:

Configuring it is quite easy and straightforward. It also has a nice comprehensive documentation on its official site. You can define all the parameters like the account that will run the service, the recovery policy and start-up type.

What about scheduling

Scheduling is also a crucial feature in background services. TopShelf doesn’t help with that but that’s easy to fix with FluentScheduler.

FluentScheduler is yet another great library available at NuGet which makes scheduling a breeze. No need to fiddle with timers, it can be defined very easily.

And here is the sample code:

Resources

• Top-Shelf Official site
• FluentScheduler