Updating DotNetNuke module from another app

Question

I have several DNN modules that I wish to update silently, using the portal's built-in module upgrade facilities called from a separate application, in this case a Windows service. I was able to make it all work with version 4.3 of the portal by modifying the DNN source in key areas to allow DotNetNuke.dll to function outside of a web application. I'm now trying to do the same thing with the 4.9.0 source code and I'm having problems.

Everything works fine until DNN tries to read from the database. I have my Windows service project, the DNN library project, and several other related projects loaded in one VS solution (the additional projects are the same ones that are in the main solution file provided with the DNN source). I call PaInstaller.Install in my service to update each module. Execution gets to reflection.vb and then it tries to create a DotNetNuke.Data.SqlDataProvider object based on the type name. It raises an exception when calling System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetType. The exception says:

Could not load type 'DotNetNuke.Data.SqlDataProvider' from assembly 'System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a'

I read this to mean it simply couldn't locate the DotNetNuke.SqlDataProvider.dll assembly. What's strange is that assembly is in the Bin folder for the DNN library project, and I also have it in the folder where my Windows service is running. The actual SqlDataProvider project is also loaded in the solution. I can't for the life of me understand why the runtime environment can't locate the assembly.

Has anyone tried something like this before, or know what could cause an assembly not to be found while stepping through the DNN source? Am I better off using something other than BuildManager.GetType to get an instance of the SQL provider type?

Answer 1

Chris,

Honestly depending on your needs, I would look at doing this a different way, as this is going to be very fragile with each DNN upgrade that happens in the future.

I'd look more towards using the "bulk install" option that DNN already has. Have your service upload the module zips to the /install/modules folder, then from there, call /install/install.aspx?mode=installresources and you are done!

If you need a third party solution to parse the results, have your windows service go through and pull the HTML response and parse it to validate success.