IIS – Using IIS as a Server for Non-HTTP Services

iis7serverwcfweb-applications

I am developing a system that is designed for multiple forms of interfacing. There is a website, but that is connected through an SDK, as well as an HTTP query interface to access data. But to improve speed and quality, I was thinking of creating a system inside IIS that get any message sent to the server, any response, but still let IIS manage SSL and normal socket connections.

Is there a way to host my project in IIS without ASP or any other kind of script with extra behavioral events?

Best Answer

By leveraging the Windows Communications Foundation framework, you can create services over a number of different network protocols. This includes HTTP, HTTPS, MSMQ, and even TCP/IP sockets. In addition to these, it also support Named Pipes for connections between two processes on the same machine.

IIS can host applications developed for WCF, even if they aren't HTTP or HTTPS based.

For more in-depth information about the different protocols that WCF supports, and information about the relative strengths and weaknesses of each, MSDN has good information about this.

While many people have argued that WCF is complicated to configure, it does an excellent job of allowing you to focus on writing code at a fairly high level of abstraction without worrying about the actual transport layer implementation details. I know of a number of projects that have made excellent use of the MSMQ transport in particular in order to enable durable transports that survive intermittent connectivity.

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IIS Express might be an option. This article is about IIS Express with SSL but also can give you some idea's on how to configure for your problem.

Remember that IIS Express is really IIS. It's just "local personal not-a-service" IIS. That means that IISExpress puts its config files in C:\Users\YOU\Documents\IISExpress\config rather than in some machine-wide location.

My project is called "MvcApplication18" so I can open up my ApplicationHost.config and look for "MvcApplication18." You can too. There's my site, right there, in IISExpress's applicationHost.config:

<site name="MvcApplication18" id="39">
    <application path="/" applicationPool="Clr4IntegratedAppPool">
        <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="c:\users\scottha\documents\visual studio 2010\Projects\MvcApplication18\MvcApplication18" />
    </application>
    <bindings>
        <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:15408:localhost" />
    </bindings>
</site>

An other option might be to script the repointing of the virtual directories and call it where you think is appropriate (pre build step, separate script) MSBuild extensions could get you started in that direction.

Hope this helps.

How to handle different web root running in iis on locahost vs. web server (iis7)

For each of the websites setup a hostname in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts as a loopback to your local machine:

127.0.0.1    dev.thewebsitename.com
127.0.0.1    dev.thewebsitename.co.uk
127.0.0.1    dev.anotherwebsitename.com

this way you won't have to do any special mapping for your website resources. You can then setup multiple websites in IIS7 as you would do on your live webserver that only serve for the specified urls above. All you then need to do is change your web project's start url to be the new dev address and it will all be working.

I always then setup the different test servers exactly the same so all you need to do is change the subdomain to http://uat.thewebsitename.com etc. If you have a lot of sites you can also created a page with links to all the different sites and then have that bookmarked.

Also if you have a CDN for images you can either add that url as a loopback too, or just upload the images when developing. If you have them locally the speed will be great but you will need to make sure that you remove that loopback when you test.

This always worked like a dream for me and because it replicates your live servers and things like incorrect image/script urls will show up when developing. It does take a little more time to setup but is worthwhile and if you script it using PowerShell it won't be painful if you have to set it up again or for another developer.

Best Answer

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How to handle different web root running in iis on locahost vs. web server (iis7)

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