In winforms, what is the fastest way to make a window displaying console output?

Question

I have several screens containing some data queries that can take a lot of time. My db layer already puts query strings in the console (I can see them in the output window when debugging). I just want to have a window that the user can open to see the same if they become impatient.

Any suggestions on a quick way to do this?

Answer 1

If you redirect Console.Out to an instance of StringWriter , you can get the text that was written to the console:

 StringWriter writer = new StringWriter(); Console.SetOut(writer); StringBuilder consoleOut = writer.GetStringBuilder(); string text = consoleOut.ToString(); 

If you do this in the new Form , you can then poll at intervals to get the text that has been written to the console so far and put its value in the TextBox . A rough example:

 public MyForm() { InitializeComponent(); StringWriter writer = new StringWriter(); Console.SetOut(writer); Timer timer = new Timer(); timer.Tick += (o, s) => textBox.Text = writer.GetStringBuilder().ToString(); timer.Interval = 500; timer.Start(); } 

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A few things to watch out for:

• StringWriter is one-time, so technically you need to dispose of it when it is done (although in fact its Dispose() method does nothing that is not a big problem).
• StringWriter stores an internal StringBuilder containing all the text written so far on it. Over time, this will only increase, so the longer your application runs, the more memory it will consume. You can put some checks to periodically clean it when it reaches a certain size.
• If you make the interval too short, you will constantly use the CPU.
• Be sure to set Console.Out back to its original value when you close the form, otherwise you won’t be able to print messages to the console again.

Answer 2

Debugview

DebugView is an application that allows you to track debug output on your local system or any computer on the network that can be accessed via TCP / IP. It is capable of displaying output in kernel mode and Win32 mode, so you don’t need a debugger to catch the debug output generated by your applications or device drivers, and you don’t need to change applications or drivers to use non-standard debugging API output.