Robert Lucero IIS Testing Blog : Extensibility

Client Certificates, Now with a UI!

rlucero — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:42:35 GMT

Dave , a test lead at IIS, sent me a link to Puneet Gupta’s blog post about the Client Certificates UI that he developed. One of the more common requests we get on the IIS 7 UI team is for a Client Certificates UI Module. Puneet took advantage of...(read more)

Client-Server Extensibilty Notes

rlucero — Fri, 25 May 2007 15:37:00 GMT

This is just an overview of my personal experience with IIS7’s Extensibility capabilities.

I’m breaking this down into 3 sections:

1. Tips and Tricks with the GAC and how to avoid being confused

2. What’s in an Async Call?

3. Advantages of breaking the new module into two separate DLL’s

1: Tips and Tricks with the GAC

This is more about troubleshooting your GAC entry and including your GAC information in the module provider section of administration.config. Recently, I ran into a problem with porting and modifying an experimental module and the GAC information was my sticking point. My problem was registering the module in administration.config.

Here are the steps for making sure your module is in the GAC and in IIS:

1. Follow the steps given in the Extensibility Demos. Specifically, make sure that the binaries are signed and the Post-Build event is:

CALL "%VS80COMNTOOLS%\vsvars32.bat" > NULL

gacutil.exe /if "$(TargetPath)"

2. Use gacutil to determine the information needed for administration.config. For example:

C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL>gacutil /l ExtensibilityDemoMicrosoft (R) .NET Global Assembly Cache Utility. Version 2.0.50727.12Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The Global Assembly Cache contains the following assemblies: ExtensibilityDemo, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=3a197a7356d6a88, processorArchitecture=MSIL

Number of items = 1

The essential line is the assembly information line. Also make sure that the name of the class and the assembly name match exactly.

3. Figure out the name of the Module Provider class and name it something very clear.

4. Add the new line with the into administration.config in the following manner:

NameSpace.ModuleProviderClassName, AssemblyName, Version, Culture, PublicKeyToken

Now the created module should appear inside of the IIS UI.

2. What’s in an async call?

Again, while developing an experimental module and following the steps used in the demos a stumbled on another point. The demo module makes a single StartAsyncTask call in order to read the config. My experimental module was reading a number of config sections so I decided that instead of having one single call I should make one call per UI section I was displaying. This way if there are any remote failures or timeouts I’ll get some settings. My example had nine individual StartAsyncTasks. This is bad for the following reasons:

1. Every async task takes a thread away from the thread pool. This means I was using nine threads from a limited pool.

2. Only one asynchronous task is supported at a time. If another async task starts the first one will be canceled. I haven’t been able to prove that, but that is something that Carlos explained to me.

3. This method doesn’t take full advantage of Property Bags.

The best practice for accessing multiple config sections is to fill a single property bag.

3. Advantages of breaking the new module into two separate DLL’s.

In the Extensibility Demo Articles it isn’t perfectly clear what is happening with the client and server portions. If these steps are followed literally the resulting project will contain a single DLL. It is important to note that this works, but it limits functionality in remote scenarios.

To create two separate DLLs two separate projects should be created within a Visual Studio Solution. The naming convention around here is <ModuleName>UI for the server component and <ModuleName>UIClient for the client code.

ModuleNameUI Contains: The module provider code (i.e. DemoModuleProvider.cs in the demos), the module service code (i.e. DemoModuleService.cs in the demos) and other code used to interpret the config or server information.

ModuleNameUIClient Contains: The actual module, with appropriate UI code and the Module Service Proxy

Extensibility Module Designer Fun...

rlucero — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:38:00 GMT

... or How to beat the system by having Visual Studio Form Designer create your module forms.

The UI extensibility point is a powerful feature found in IIS7, but one of the more difficult things is designing the layout of the extended module forms. It can become difficult to manage all of the button locations, list view settings and other controls when the page is being initialized without the Visual Studio form designer.

Here is how to use the Visual Studio Forms Designer to create the lay out for your module page:

1. Get a hold of some form of Visual Studio. The express version will work just fine for this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualcsharp/default.aspx

2. Open Visual Studio and create a new Windows Application.

3. Create the form as you would like it shown inside of IIS7.

4. When you’re done right click on the form and select View Code.

5. Right click on InitializeComponent() and select Go to Definition.

6. Open the Windows Form Designer Generated Code region and copy everything inside of Initalize component and the variable names.

IE:

Windows Form Designer generated code

private System.Windows.Forms.Label fileExtensionLabel; private System.Windows.Forms.TextBox textBox1; private System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox comboBox1; private System.Windows.Forms.Label allowedLabel; private System.Windows.Forms.Button okButton;

private System.Windows.Forms.Button cancelButton;

7. On your module page, paste the copied code into an Initalize method and call it within the page constructor.

internal class DemoPage : ModulePage{ public RequestFilteringPage() { this.Initalize(); }…}

8. Test the module. It should show the same controls that were created inside of the Visual Studio forms designer inside of an IIS7 module.

A few designer tips:

- The background color in IIS7 is white and not the control gray.

- Beware of anchoring. The right edge of the module page is actually underneath the actions task pane.