Get Arguments array from CmdLine of a WPF Application.

 

This is my first post of, I hope, a series related to WPF and C#.

The examples below are made with VS (Visual Studio) 2010 and .Net 4.0, for this precise example you can make it work with .Net 3.5 at least.

During the life of an application we can listen for some important events, these events can help us to drive the logic of our application from the startup to the end of an application life.

If you are creating a simple WPF Application in VS you will get a file called App.xaml for free. In this file you can add arguments to handle events.

<Application x:Class=”WpfAppStartup.App”

             xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation”

             xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml”

             Startup=”Application_Startup”

             Exit=”Application_Exit”

             Activated=”Application_Activated”

             Deactivated=”Application_Deactivated”

             SessionEnding=”Application_SessionEnding”

             StartupUri=”MainWindow.xaml”>

 

As you can see in the above code, I added the Startup and Exit arguments in the Application node.
(Tip: just write ‘Startup=’ and then press Tab on your keyboard to have the method name and signature automatically created in App.xaml.cs file).

Below is the list of Events you can catch and a short description.

Name	Description
Startup	Called when Application.Run() is called, shortly before the main window is displayed. This is where you can extract all cmdline arguments.
Exit	Called when the application is shut down, shortly before the Run() methods returns.
Activated	Called when application get focus.
Deactivated	Called when application lose focus.
SessionEnding	Occurs when the Windows session is ending (log off or shut down computer).
DispatcherUnhandledException	Called when an Unhandled application occurs in your application (main thread).

 

Now back to our first goal: getting the arguments array!

private void Application_Startup(object sender, StartupEventArgs e)

{

if (e.Args.Length > 0)

       {

             foreach (string arg in e.Args)

              {

                    // logic for arguments processing.

              }

}

       else

       {

             // No arguments!

}

 

MessageBox.Show(“Application.Run() is called, “ +

“this happen before the main window is displayed.”);

}

If there are any unclear sentence, please feel free to comment!