WebServer for existing app

Question

We have an existing windows desktop app written in C# 6 that uses an MDB MS access database for its storage. I need to write a web interface that can read that php webpage and maybe write to it later on.

This web interface will be included with our current installer for the application or as a simple addon. The user should only have to click start server and it should just work serving the php pages from the installation directory.

I was playing with gwan, nginx, quickphp. Only the last one seems simple enough to work.

So my question is what do or would you use to achieve this? Are there alternatives to quickPHP?

Distribution. I'd also like to have something we can include in the installer. I dont want the user to have to do and download any additional apps.

Answer 1

• EasyPHP
• Lampp

For a light-light-weight server without installation you can look at nanoweb portable. I am not sure how performant it is though.

Answer 2

If you can live with other types of server side scripting than php, Microsoft's Cassini server looks like potentially a very good match (.net based, source available, small, ...).

Oddly enough it's hard to find a "canonical" url for it but Googling or searching here on SO brings back plenty of links.

Edit: an at first sight surprising feature may be that out of the box Cassini only seems to listen to localhost (127.0.0.1). However, as explained here,

Cassini only listens to localhost requests (for security reasons) -- it uses IPAddress.Loopback in the code. You can find the code in Server.cs and you can change it to IPAddress.Any to enable access from other machines. Of course, you'd be opening up the port for outside access, so you need to be aware of the security implications.

Or go with UltiDev Cassini

Answer 3

I know you said PHP, you also mentioned your app is written in C#.

You might want to take a look at aspnetserve if you are willing to write the web part in .NET. It might be possible to use PHP with it, but I don't know.

Either way I have found it very useful in several projects.