Redirect Console output to RichTextBox

[SoftwareTester]

I have a console application and want its output to be redirected to a RichtextBox on a form (using C# and Visual Studio 2008).

The console application uses several Console.WriteLine() and Console.Write() overloads.

How can I redirect the output?

[jshultz]

So, you have two applications, one being a console app and the other a windows form app and you want to send the console app's output to a rich text box in the windows app?

I don't know if you can "redirect it" to the windows app, necessarily, but you could use sockets or remoting to send it to the windows app.

[SoftwareTester]

yes i have 2 applications but I could use the second by 'calling it' (instead of 'Program' and 'Main' I could make it a class and instantiate it). But changing all Console.WriteLine() s will just be too much , so if I could could code something like Console.Out(MyRickTextBox) it would be great.

[TheCPUWizard]

Probably the eassiest wat to handle the is to Launch your Forms application, and have it spawn your console program as a process. When you create the process, you are allowed to specify pipes/streams for input, output (and possibly error, though that may be merged with output by the time it gets to the managed layer).

Then you just keep a thread running which is pulling data from the "output" stream, invoke it back to your main thread, and put it in the control.

[SoftwareTester]

In the menatime i found something that works allthough I don't know what problems it can cause.
One problem i encountered is 'if Console.ReadLine() is being used the app crashes' but i don't know if that's because of the redirection or it is 'normal' while running a non-console application.

Another thing is I (probably) have to overload all the WriteLine() and Write() methods, something i don't like

but here is the code :

	public class StringRedir : StringWriter
	{ // Redirecting Console output to RichtextBox
		private RichTextBox outBox;

		public StringRedir(ref RichTextBox textBox)
		{
			outBox = textBox;
		}

		public override void WriteLine(string x)
		{
			outBox.Text += x + "\n";
			outBox.Refresh();
		}
	}

	public partial class FormResults : Form
	{
		private StringRedir RedirConsole;
		private TextWriter ConsoleWriter;

		public FormResults()
		{
			InitializeComponent();

			// Here we redirect Console.WriteLine to a RichTextBox control. 
			ConsoleWriter = Console.Out;	// Save the current console TextWriter. 
			RedirConsole = new StringRedir(ref rtbOutput);
			Console.SetOut(RedirConsole);	// Set console output to the StringRedir class. 
		}

		~FormResults()
		{
			Console.SetOut(ConsoleWriter);	// Redirect Console back to original TextWriter. 
			RedirConsole.Close();			// Close our StringRedir TextWriter. 
		}

// + rest of usual code of a form
       }

I don't know if I should close redirection in the destructor or maybe on another occasion (maybe while Closing??? but what Event EXACTLY?)

But for now it seems to work at mine

[MadHatter]

yep thats pretty much how you do it, though I'd recommend popping the console.out into another thread where you readline it until the thread aborts, and from there call out of the thread with the text read using a delegate, and update the text sent to the textbox from your delegate handler.

I've done this on quite a few occasions (one for a GPG wrapper I wrote, another for console based tracing inside an old windows app (done prior to log4net) and it works well.

[SoftwareTester]

Have you been overloading all the WriteLine() and Write() alternatives?

Would be much more nice if that will not be needed as that would mean that IF new overloaded methods become available those would NOT break the code.

Your approach sounds better but a bit complicated to me (due to my poor knowledge of delegates yet) I will have a look at it.