How to configure and debug a web application using MVC and WebForms

Question

I have an existing ASP.NET web application that I'm converting to MVC 1.0. The site started out with one goal. However, over time our sponsors are asking for more functionality and it is obvious that MVC would be our best route due to the new requirements. I've dabbled in MVC over the last couple of months and have a pretty good grasp on it all works. The problem that I'm faced with now is that the meat of our existing web application makes extensive use of a 3rd party tool that only works within ASP.NET WebForms.

The solution that I'm working on is to have two web applications running on the server. The one application would be our existing WebForms app and is solely used to expose the above mentioned 3rd party tool's functionality. The other application will be our main portal that will act as the new site. When the user wishes to interact with the 3rd party tool, I want to be able to load an iFrame on the appropriate Views that links the user to the other application and will then allow them to interact with the WebForms site. Does this sound crazy?

The number 1 problem that I'm faced with right now is how to configure my solution make the MVC application talk to the WebForms application. Every time I run the solution, a different port number is assigned to the two applications and I can't figure out how to configure my iFrame "src" properties correctly. Of course, I can't add the WebForms application to my MVC applictions' References, so I'm stumped!

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Answer 1

If the port issue is the only problem, you can run both of them in IIS under a fixed virtual application.

But the ASP.NET development server also has the feature to fix the port to a specific number and not randomize it each time.