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Please Note: OddJob requires StringTheory
Do you need to:
- Run a process (like batch files and external exes) asynchronously from within your app and monitor the output (think of FTPing files via an external FTP client)?
- Handle scripting languages (like PHP scripts) synchronously or asynchronously?
- Run a user interface to control your service (and bypass UAC)?
Then you need to take a look at OddJob.
Clarion Webinar on ClarionLive
ClarionLive Webinar number
24 included an introduction to
OddJob. If you're not sure if Oddjob
will help you, then we recommend you download and watch the webinar. There
is no charge for this. The ClarionLive downloads page is
here.Description
Please Note: OddJob requires
StringTheory
OddJob enables you to easily run and manage processes (like batch files
and external exes) from within your application. Not only can you run and
terminate the processes that you start, but you can monitor them in your application as they're
running.
Lets face it, sometimes you just can't get away from those ol' batch files. And being able to run them displaying (and being able to analyse the output) in your application .. wow, that's really useful. Or an FTP exe. Simply pass the details on the command line, and get the "I'm done" when it's finished, and be able to verify if it succeeded or not. Instead of using the RUN (or shellexecute) and hoping the program executes correctly, you can retrieve the output and check it.
Think about it. Retrieving data from process (like the output of a batch file normally displayed in the black dos window), could really come in handy sometimes. Also hiding the dos window that is normally displayed while running a batch file....
These functions writing to the DOS window are writing their results to something called "Standard Out" - or StdOut. By contrast OddJob allows you to start a process and "attach" the Standard out from that process to your process.
You also control the "Environment" that the other process has to run with. So you have complete control over the environment variables that the other process will "see" as it runs. A Job Object allows groups of these "processes" (EXEs, batch files, etc) to be managed as a unit.
So one way to think of OddJob is like a RUN command on steroids.
Indeed it's way beyond RUN because the usefulness of RUN ends as soon as the
other process is started. With OddJob the
usefulness is only just beginning when the other process starts.
OddJob also allows you to monitor the processes in a Job returning information like CPU and Memory usage. So if you attach a process to your job, you can then decide if the other process has consumed too many resources, and if necessary, kill it. And restart it. So if you want one program to monitor another, this makes an excellent way to do that. Better yet, if the process being monitored is something you wrote, then you could be more polite than just killing it, by sending it a message to shut-down or something.
OddJob has functionality that let's you list all the processes running on the PC - not just the ones already in your job. And then you can add any of those processes to your job. (The only caveat being that a process can only be in one Job, so if it's already in a job then you can't grab it.) Once the process is in your job you can monitor it, and kill it if you like. (You can kill any process, even if they're not in your job, but you can't monitor them as effectively if they're not in your job). So in this way, it's a process Manager.
How about starting a desktop interface for your services? In token ring 0, which means you bypass UAC (Vista's User Access Control).
Feature list
- Advanced running of processes.
- Built in IPC (inter-process communication) for transferring data between your applications.
- Jobs to group, control and monitor processes.
- Start command line processes and interact with them via their StdIn and StdOut. Pass them command line parameters, retrieve the return result, and terminate them as needed.
- Group processes into Jobs and control them as a unit.
- Coming soon: The ability to pass data to a process while it runs.
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