How to capture binary process output in C#/.NET

Question

I want to launch an external application, and capture its output. That's pretty easy, using Diagnostics.Process and its OutputStream.

However, the process I have generated binary data, which I need to capture as a Stream, not as the textual StreamWriter

Its there a way to get the underlying raw binary stream?

Currently, I hack it by launching a batch file which looks like:

myapplication | socat stdin tcp-connect:localhost:12345

And in my code I create and listen on a TCP socket. while this hack works, its a bit ugly, and I prefer to use the external process directly.

(One thing I can't do is use local files, as the data is real-time in its nature)

Ben Voigt · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-27 00:39:35Z

4

How about p.StandardOutput.BaseStream?

answered Mar 27, 2011 at 0:39

Ben Voigt

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2 Comments

SerG Over a year ago

How about to give a full answer?

Ben Voigt Over a year ago

@SerG: This is a full answer. The only question asked was "Its [sic] there a way to get the underlying raw binary stream?"

KeithS · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-13 19:28:14Z

1

You could use a named pipe, similar to but more in-depth than the OutputStream functionality of Process (which is basically a listener for StandardOutput). Named pipes are accessible using Streams, without any assumption as to the content being Unicode character data. They also don't tie up network ports, unless you want to connect to a pipe remotely (which is also possible).

answered Dec 13, 2010 at 19:28

KeithS

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Ben Voigt Over a year ago

But you need to modify the child process to make it use the pipe, or else p/invoke CreateProcess to pass the pipe as the child's standard output handle.

Peter · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-26 23:41:07Z

1

I used the follwowing code to read binary data from stdout of a program

ProcessStartInfo info = new ProcessStartInfo();
info.FileName = "yourProcess";
info.Arguments = "blah";
info.StandardOutputEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding("latin1");//important part
info.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
info.UseShellExecute = false;
Process p = Process.Start(info);
FileStream fs = new FileStream("outputfile.bin", FileMode.Create);

while((val = p.StandardOutput.Read())!= -1){
    fs.WriteByte((byte)val);
}

p.WaitForExit();
fs.Close();

answered Mar 26, 2011 at 23:41

Peter

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