How might I schedule a C# Windows Service to perform a task daily?

Solution 1:

I wouldn't use Thread.Sleep(). Either use a scheduled task (as others have mentioned), or set up a timer inside your service, which fires periodically (every 10 minutes for example) and check if the date changed since the last run:

private Timer _timer;
private DateTime _lastRun = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-1);

protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
{
    _timer = new Timer(10 * 60 * 1000); // every 10 minutes
    _timer.Elapsed += new System.Timers.ElapsedEventHandler(timer_Elapsed);
    _timer.Start();
    //...
}


private void timer_Elapsed(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
    // ignore the time, just compare the date
    if (_lastRun.Date < DateTime.Now.Date)
    {
        // stop the timer while we are running the cleanup task
        _timer.Stop();
        //
        // do cleanup stuff
        //
        _lastRun = DateTime.Now;
        _timer.Start();
    }
}

Solution 2:

Check out Quartz.NET. You can use it within a Windows service. It allows you to run a job based on a configured schedule, and it even supports a simple "cron job" syntax. I've had a lot of success with it.

Here's a quick example of its usage:

// Instantiate the Quartz.NET scheduler
var schedulerFactory = new StdSchedulerFactory();
var scheduler = schedulerFactory.GetScheduler();

// Instantiate the JobDetail object passing in the type of your
// custom job class. Your class merely needs to implement a simple
// interface with a single method called "Execute".
var job = new JobDetail("job1", "group1", typeof(MyJobClass));

// Instantiate a trigger using the basic cron syntax.
// This tells it to run at 1AM every Monday - Friday.
var trigger = new CronTrigger(
    "trigger1", "group1", "job1", "group1", "0 0 1 ? * MON-FRI");

// Add the job to the scheduler
scheduler.AddJob(job, true);
scheduler.ScheduleJob(trigger);

Solution 3:

A daily task? Sounds like it should just be a scheduled task (control panel) - no need for a service here.