I need to know if developing a Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) solution requires IIS installed. I would like to be able do develop a WIF solution using the built-in Visual Studio Development Server (I heard it is called Cassini) if possible.
All of the samples I've downloaded assume that IIS is up and running on the local system.
This blog, Securing WCF Services with Custom WIF STS: A Step-By-Step guide, lists requirements for a WIF example and has IIS as one of the requirements.
I've added the images to allow you to follow easily with the steps.
Pre-requisites:
Visual studio 2010
The development machine has IIS installed (I use Windows 2008 R2)
Windows Identity Foundation (WIF): download it from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17331
Windows Identity Foundation SDK: download it from : http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=4451
I also have noted another StackOverflow posting indicating that IIS Express can be used. I have not yet fully investigated IIS Express, however this doesn't answer my basic question.
I can't seem to find any other references anywhere else about this topic. I'd appreciate knowing if anyone has been able to develop a WIF solution implementing a Security Token Service using the standard Visual Studio Development Server alone. Otherwise, I will look into using IIS Express. I am unable to install and use IIS (non-Express) on my system as I don't have local admin access.
Thank you.
Before .NET 4.5 WIF was a separate package and an additional installation step.
.NET 4.5 makes several important changes and moves WIF into the .NET base class libraries. The move enables WIF to be used by any application regardless of host. There's enough changes that if you are starting new, I recommend upgrading to .NET 4.5 to avoid porting in the future and because the integration does make things easier.
I'm currently running Visual Studio 2012 and testing WIF code in IIS Express and ServiceHost without issues.
I don't have local admin access
This is a big problem. Not having local admin for WIF development may not work. You will need elevated privileges to install tools and test applications.
Regardless of version, you shouldn't have any issues running apps with WIF outside IIS. The limitations are more around running SSL. Have you tried? Did you get any errors?
As #Eugenio states, one of the issues is around SSL. The other problem is that Cassini uses localhost which means that you need to have a valid localhost certificate if you are thinking of adding this application to something like ADFS. (as opposed to having a certificate for the actual machine name).
Also, to do WIF development, you have to run VS in Admin mode.
Related
When trying to install a web setup project (MSI) created in Visual Studio 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 2008 Server the setup will fail, with some generic error.
According to http://devio.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/pitfalls-installing-web-setup-msi-on-iis-7/ this is because of a compatibility problem between the setup project en IIS7.
To resolve this I've to enable/install IIS6 metabase compatibility in my windows configuration. This workaround did fix the problem, but raises 2 questions:
Does this have any (negative) impact on functionality of IIS 7?
How can I notify a user running the installation of this problem so he or she can take proper action and install the metabase compatibility component? Is it possible to pop-up the windows component configuration dialog from this install, to make life easier for the user?
I don't think this will have any impact on the application itself, as long as it's implemented the way to talk to IIS7 via its native API. Otherwise, if it doesn't support IIS7 you'd have to enable IIS6 compatibility anyway.
The standard approach to search for anything on a target machine is searching registry and file system. I don't know how it is possible in VS setup project, but e.g. WiX has special elements for this (RegistrySearch, DirectorySearch, FileSearch). Basically, this post to WiX Tips and Tricks thread shows how to check for IIS6 compatibility in WiX and block the installation if it's not enables/installed. It's rather straight-forward even if you don't know WiX, but know the concepts of Windows Installer, and it can help you translate the code into the similar thing in VS setup project.
We seem to be having one negative impact on our servers.
Everytime we roll out a .NET 4.0 application with a msi made in Visual Studio, We get a recycle of ALL our application pools, even the ones not affected by the install.
Apparently the root cause of this is the IIS 6 compatibility. ( This was reported to us by a developer of microsoft in response to our support question about this.
At the moment we have no solution. It's impossible to convert all our installers to Wix.
Is there a web server I can embed with an ASP.NET MVC3 application?
The goal is to setup an installer where the user does not need to setup the web application on IIS, etc. The installer will install a web server configure it to listen to some port and host the files from there.
IIS Express could be used for that purpose, they mention in the FAQ that the MSI can be redistributed:
IIS Express FAQ
You can use HttpListener, Here's an example.
As others have mentioned - use IIS Express OR what you can do is install the version of IIS that would normally be on the system. Check out using WiX for installs and items such as this:
http://windows-installer-xml-wix-toolset.687559.n2.nabble.com/Using-pkgmgr-to-install-IIS-7-td5990722.html
You may be able to find someone on the WiX mailing list that has done just this already.
Note - WiX was written by some Microsoft folks and was actually going to be the installer in VS 2010 but was changed unfortunately.
I'm trying to get started with building my own webparts, planning to follow this MSDN article.
I've downloaded Visual C# 2010 Express - I'm not quite at the point where I feel comfortable dropping 1000 big ones yet, and I installed Visual Web Developer 2010 Express via the WPInstaller.
Following through the tutorial, aside from the fact that I don't get the option to create a "Web Control Library", a gap I filled with this article, I can't seem to find the sn.exe tool (or the "Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt"!).
I know it's not quite a direct programming related question, but I can't even get the thing going yet!
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
EDIT:-
I think I may be jumping the gun quite considerably, I wrote a simple hello world example and tried to build it but it doesn't have any references to the Microsoft.SharePoint packages and they don't appear in my lists.
Am I understanding some more research I've done (namely this) correctly, in that I have to actually have a full installation of actual SharePoint on the machine I'm developing on?
sn.exe is part of the .Net Framework SDK tools - not actually part of Visual Studio.
If you've got the SDK installed (which I think you must have if you're using VS) then it will be in a directory such as (depending on which version of .NET SDK you've got installed)
c:\program files\microsoft.net\SDK\v2.0\Bin
You can develop SharePoint web parts with VS express but you won't be able to use extensions like VSeWSS which can make your life a little easier.
You don't have develop on a machine with SharePoint installed upon - you can just copy the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll assembly from a machine with it installed on and reference it in your project.
There are pros and cons to developing on a SharePoint machine.
Its easier to get started -
especially debugging locally rather
than remote debugging.
Harder to be
sure that you're code will work a
'real server' - are you sure you
don't have any dependencies that may
not be installed.
Harder to work with
multiple versions of SharePoint (2007
WSS and MOSS and 2010 foundation,
server etc).
If you do want to work with a locally installed SharePoint then
You can install windows server OS with SharePoint and Visual Studio.
there is a hack for installing SharePoint 2007 on vista (referenced in the SO article you link to)
you can install SharePoint Foundation 2010 on Windows 7 (but I am not sure what the licensing restrictions are - is this maybe something thats given through MSDN?)
If you decide to go with the remote server installation then save yourself some grief and use virtualization such as VMWare Server, Virtual PC or Hyper-V.
If you are doing SharePoint development trying to reference the Microsoft.SharePoint namespaces you need to have SharePoint installed on the machine if you want to do things like debugging, etc. For SP 2010 you CAN install SharePoint on a Win 7 machine. For previous versions of SharePoint, you will need to setup a Server that is Server 2003 or Server 2008 (you can't install SP 2007 and earlier on client machines). Generally this is a Virtual Machine for developers.
Having said all of that, there are relatively few reasons you need SharePoint to develop a WebPart. The vast majority of the WebPart functionality is part of the System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts namespace. Even if I am accessing SharePoint data, I generally use the ASP.NET web part.
If you are trying to use the new SharePoint VS 2010 functionality to create Visual Web Parts, etc, then you will need to install SP 2010, since that functionality is not supported in earlier version of SharePoint.
John
When I run my asp.net mvc site in visual studio 2008 is it running iis7 or iis6 Internally?
Also does mvc require iis7 (is intended for?)
Via Visual Studio, you're not really running IIS6 or IIS7. You're running Cassini. You can find out how Cassini differs from IIS here. As for ASP.NET MVC, it may be deployed to run under IIS6 or IIS7. As mentioned previously, you have to jump through some hoops if you want to run under IIS6 so IIS7 is ideal if possible. If you are stuck with IIS6 (maybe you're on Windows Server 2003) there are a couple of best practices (Url file extensions or wild card application maps) which Phil Haack has well documented which will help to get your application running correctly.
If you mean the one built in to windows, that is tied to your OS version rather than to your version of Visual Studio.
If you mean the version that Visual Studio uses as a development webserver, then that version is not IIS. Its an internal webserver (very similar to Cassini) suited for testing and debugging only.
MVC can work in IIS6 but you need to make sure to set your routing to "{controller}.aspx/{action}/{id}".
As for IIS6 or 7 for the "IISLite" that VS uses, I am unsure of that. I think VS2008 uses IIS7 because I do not need to add ".aspx" to my controller in the route when debugging.
How to deploy my ASP.NET website to IIS7? I'm using Visual Studio 2005. And I don't know where to start.
I tend to take more of a manual approach, but there is a web publish feature built into Visual Studio that should get you going.
Here is some reading you can do on it:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/VSDeploy.aspx
Here's some preliminary steps, a little more manual than some other options, but they are the ones I'm comfortable with:
Obtain access to the server where IIS7 is installed. If you don't have IIS7 installed on a server, install it. If you are not able to get access to this server, you will need to have the administrator of that server set up IIS7.
Create the website in IIS that you want to deploy to, or have the server administrator create an empty website for you to run your website on.
Use the 'publish' feature in Visual Studio to build a deployable version of your site. This is what you will install on IIS7.
Copy paste the website over to the server where IIS7 is installed. You will need to place it in a directory which you can set as the Home Directory for the site.
If you have access to the server, and rights to administer IIS7, set the Home Directory of the site to point at the directory where you copied over your files.
Enable the website, and you should be good to go!
NOTES:
These instructions assume the following:
a) You have some basic knowledge of how to configure IIS7 (or at least access to somebody who does)
b) You have some basic knowledge of how to install IIS7 if it is not installed (or access to somebody who does)
c) You have some basic knowledge on web site publishing from Visual Studio
If you need more instructions on these 3 notes, you may wish to consult the references for IIS7 and Visual Studio.