MVolo's Blog : ASP.NET

Workaround for using IIS 7 url authorization with ASP.NET roles

IIS 7.0 Server-Side : IIS — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:33:00 GMT

When using the IIS 7.0 Integrated pipeline, you gain access to a ton of cool scenarios where IIS and ASP.NET features work together to provide value for your application – regardless of the application content. Most of these features involve using...(read more)

When to restart IIS when making changes to your application

IIS 7.0 Server-Side : IIS — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 06:02:00 GMT

Knowing when to restart IIS to pick up various types of changes to your application has traditionally been a challenge. IIS and ASP.NET are both stateful software systems, which heavily rely on cached state that is loaded once to provide high performance...(read more)

IconHandler 2.0: file icons in your ASP.NET applications

mvolo — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 06:56:00 GMT

Since its release, IconHandler has been a pretty popular module (on its own and with the custom DirectoryListingModule). Today, I am releasing v2.0 of IconHandler, which contains some much-requested functionality and fixes a few issues that people have reported with the original version.

Read all about it (and I mean all) and download at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2008/04/27/IconHandler-2.0-File-icons-in-ASP.NET-applications.aspx.

Thanks,

Mike

Creating portable ASP.NET applications that work on IIS 6.0, IIS 7.0 Classic, and IIS 7.0 Integrated modes

mvolo — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:36:00 GMT

ASP.NET applications in IIS 7.0 Integrated mode requires configuration changes if they define custom modules or handlers. However, it is still possible to create portable ASP.NET applications that can function in all three environments without configuration changes.

See how at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2008/04/15/Creating-portable-ASP.NET-applications-that-work-on-IIS-6.0_2C00_-IIS-7.0-Classic_2C00_-and-IIS-7.0-Integrated-modes.aspx.

Thanks,

Mike

Two-Level Authentication with Forms Authentication and Windows Authentication

mvolo — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:47:00 GMT

The integration of IIS and ASP.NET authentication stages in Integrated mode applications brings a lot of benefits, including being able to use ASP.NET authentication features like Forms Authentication for the entire web site. However, it also prevents two-level authentication schemes that relied on the two separate authentication stages between IIS and ASP.NET from working.

I mentioned this in the list of ASP.NET breaking changes in December. Since then, I've gotten many requests for re-enabling these scenarios in Integrated mode, so I put together a workaround for doing this in Integrated mode.

To learn more and download the bits / source code of the workaround, see http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2008/02/11/IIS-7.0-Two_2D00_Level-Authentication-with-Forms-Authentication-and-Windows-Authentication.aspx.

Thanks,

Mike

MSDN Mag: Enhance Your Apps with the ASP.NET Integrated Pipeline!

mvolo — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:53:00 GMT

At last, my MSDN article about using the ASP.NET Integrated Pipeline is out in MSDN Magazine. This article is all about using existing ASP.NET features and building new ASP.NET modules to improve existing applications.

What's more, I do this without touching a single line of the application itself, which happens to be a PHP application using the IIS 7.0 FastCGI support.

So go read the article for an in-depth look at using the power of ASP.NET Integrated pipeline to add features, improve security, and turbo-charge performance of your applications. Then head over to my blog to learn more about doing this yourself for your apps on IIS 7.0 - starting with building your own modules and handlers.

Article highlights and more at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/12/20/MSDN-Magazine_3A00_-Enhance-Your-Applications-with-ASP.NET-Integrated-Pipeline.aspx.

Thanks,

Mike

Breaking Changes for ASP.NET 2.0 applications running in Integrated mode on IIS 7.0

mvolo — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 02:12:00 GMT

ASP.NET 2.0 applications on IIS 7.0 are hosted using the ASP.NET Integrated mode by default. This new mode enables a myriad of exciting scenarios including using super-valuable ASP.NET features like Forms Authentication for your entire Web site, and developing new ASP.NET modules to do things like URL rewriting, authorization, logging, and more at the IIS level.

As you know, with great power comes great responsibility. Similarly, with making ASP.NET applications more powerful in IIS 7.0 comes the responsibility of making sure that existing ASP.NET applications continue to work. This has been a major challenge for us as we re-architected the entire core engine of ASP.NET, and in the end we were highly successful in meeting it.

This post lists the changes in behavior that you may encounter when deploying your ASP.NET applications on IIS 7.0 on Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008. Read the detailed list of breaking changes at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/12/08/IIS-7.0-Breaking-Changes-ASP.NET-2.0-applications-Integrated-mode.aspx.

Thanks,

Mike

Request is not available in this context exception in Application_Start

mvolo — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 03:20:00 GMT

The “Request is not available in this context” exception is one of the more common errors you may receive on when moving ASP.NET applications to Integrated mode on IIS 7.0. This exception happens in your implementation of the Application_Start method in the global.asax file if you attempt to access the HttpContext of the request that started the application.

Learn more about why this happens and how to work around it to start enjoying the benefits of ASP.NET Integrated mode for your application: http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/11/10/Integrated-mode-Request-is-not-available-in-this-context-in-Application_5F00_Start.aspx.

Developing IIS7 web server features with the .NET framework

mvolo — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 07:38:00 GMT

This article, the first in the IIS7 .NET Developer series, focuses on getting started with developing IIS7 web server features based on the .NET Framework. Learn about the options you have for your development environment, how to set up your Visual Studio project, when to build a module vs. a handler, and more. By the end of the article, you would have built and deployed a simple IIS7 managed handler and module.

Read the entire article at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/08/15/Developing-IIS7-web-server-features-with-the-.NET-framework.aspx.

Redirect clients in your application with HttpRedirection module

mvolo — Thu, 24 May 2007 19:28:00 GMT

In a web application, it’s often necessary to redirect clients requesting one url to another url. A while ago, I wrote a module to do basic http redirection for an ASP.NET application. The HttpRedirection module allows you to configure regular expression-based rules that redirect clients from url A to url B, with a number of other features.

Learn more about rewriting and redirection, and download the HttpRedirection module / source code here: http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/05/24/Redirect-clients-in-your-application-with-HttpRedirection-module.aspx.

Get nice looking directory listings for your IIS website with DirectoryListingModule

mvolo — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 10:19:00 GMT

Do you hate bland directory listing pages that most web servers have these days?

Many of us do on the IIS team, and so over the past several years we've built a few directory listing modules to spice up IIS directory listings.

I figured I should put an end to this by writing one that is oh so much better then all the other ones - and then give it to you to build some cool templates, and create complely customized directory listings for your website.

Read more on http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/01/21/Get-nice-looking-directory-listings-for-your-IIS-website-with-DirectoryListingModule.aspx.

Display pretty file icons in your ASP.NET applications with IconHandler

mvolo — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 01:15:00 GMT

Do you like file icons? I do. They make it pretty easy to visually digest file lists in Windows, when you open a file system folder with explorer.

Displaying icons in your web application can also be pretty compelling (for example, to spruce up that boring directory listing page, or visually represent documents in your web app). Wouldn't it be cool if you can write an ASP.NET control or page that can embed these icons on your custom directory listing view?

Unfortinately, there is no easy way to get icons for files in the .NET framework, so you have to do a little interop with the Windows shell to get the icon for a file / file extension, and then figure out a way to serve it over the web as an image. So, I wrote an ASP.NET image handler that serves the icon for an aritrary file or extension, that you can simply drop into your application to get these pretty icons for whatever purposes you need.

Read more on http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/01/11/Display-pretty-file-icons-in-your-ASP.NET-applications-with-IconHandler.aspx.

Fix problems with Visual Studio F5 debugging of ASP.NET applications on IIS7 Vista

mvolo — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 01:39:00 GMT

A number of people have been reporting problems when trying to debug their ASP.NET applications on Windows Vista with Visual Studio 2005 F5 debugging support. There are a handful of posts about trying to get this to work in various ways ... most of which are missing key information needed to *really* get it to work.

Hopefully this will be the *definitive* guide to enabling F5 debugging on Vista / IIS7.

Read the details at http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2006/12/28/Fix-problems-with-Visual-Studio-F5-debugging-of-ASP.NET-applications-on-IIS7-Vista.aspx.

Stopping hot-linking leeches with IIS and ASP.NET

mvolo — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 22:33:00 GMT

Many web sites suffer from others directly linking to their image, video and other content. This practice is called often called leeching, hot-linking, or inline-linking and causes wasted bandwidth and increased server load to the victim web site.

Last weekend, I wrote a little ASP.NET module that prevents hot linking. It can be used on IIS5 (Windows 2000/XP), IIS6 (Windows Server 2003), and IIS7 (Windows Vista / Longhorn Server).

It also was a great excuse to talk about IIS and ASP.NET integration history :)

Read more on http://mvolo.com/2006/11/10/stopping-hotlinking-with-iis-and-aspnet.aspx.

Extending your IIS 7 server with .NET

mvolo — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 05:59:00 GMT

I feel like I got off on the wrong foot in my blog coverage of IIS extensibility … I started spending a lot of time talking about building IIS7 server modules with the native API, but did not mention anything about the new .NET extensibility.

First things first – IIS7, for the first time in the history of the server, provides first class support for extending the server with .NET.

Read more at http://mvolo.com/2006/10/22/why-write-native-code-extending-your-iis-7-server-with-net.aspx.