Starting external process from ASP.NET

It's not so hard with the Process class. Though, the prior poster was correct - you need to be concerned about permissions.

private string RunProcess(string cmd)
{
  System.Diagnostics.Process p; 
  p= new System.Diagnostics.Process();
  if (cmd== null || cmd=="") {
    return "no command given.";
  }
  string[] args= cmd.Split(new char[]{' '});
  if (args== null || args.Length==0 || args[0].Length==0) {
    return "no command provided.";
  }
  p.StartInfo.FileName= args[0];

  if (args.Length>1) {
    int startPoint= cmd.IndexOf(' ');
    string s= cmd.Substring(startPoint, cmd.Length-startPoint);
    p.StartInfo.Arguments= s; 
  }
  p.StartInfo.WindowStyle = System.Diagnostics.ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
  p.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
  p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;

  p.Start();

  // must have the readToEnd BEFORE the WaitForExit(), to avoid a deadlock condition
  string output= p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
  p.WaitForExit();

  return output; 
}

I sure hope you have control of the code for the external application or you are in for a lot of headaches. The MOST important thing to do is make sure there is no way for that application to hang and not terminate.

You can then use the WaitForExit(), ExitCode, StandardError, StandardOut to "catch all possible errors and find out when it's completed"

You would be better off catching all the output of the console app and storing it somewhere you can show it on a status page, rather than waiting for the app to finish.

As everyone else above has stated, you're going to go through pain otherwise.