Question

Is it possible to call some process(or exe) from the main program, send it some parameters, get some processing done and return back the result? If possible, which is the best way to do that?

I have a wpf application for managing mills. This application is used in different mills. The only difference is that the serial port communication for weighing used in the mills are different. Currently the weighing section is programmed into the application. But this makes difficult to maintain, as i have to have different versions of the project dependng on the weighbridge. So I want it like this : I have single version of the main project. The main project calls another process (or exe) and sends in some parameters. This exe does the weighing and sends back the weights.

Answer 1

if all you have is another exe file then you can run it using (taken from http://www.dotnetperls.com/process-start)

ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
startInfo.CreateNoWindow = false;
startInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
startInfo.FileName = "dcm2jpg.exe";
startInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
startInfo.Arguments = "-f j -o \"" + ex1 + "\" -z 1.0 -s y " + ex2;

try
{
        // Start the process with the info we specified.
        // Call WaitForExit and then the using statement will close.
        using (Process exeProcess = Process.Start(startInfo))
        {
           exeProcess.WaitForExit();
        }   
}
catch
{
    // Log error.
}