Is it possible to host a asp.net mvc website from a winforms application?

Question

I have a winform application that controls some transmitters and sound cards. There is a requirement to be able to provide a web interface for controlling those devices.

Currently I use WCF to communicate from the controllers in my asp.net MVC site to the winform app. That works well, but there is now a desire to move the hardware to another machine when needed and that means that IIS has to be installed and set-up on that machine.

I know it isn't that hard, but I won't be the one actually doing the moving. It will be the users. If I could host the site from the winform app them it would basically be portable besides the hardware drivers need for a usb to serial converter we use.

Answer 1

Can you use a windows service? The whole winforms app as a service doesn't seem right to me. It assumes that the app is always running. I would create a windows service and expose WCF endpoints from that.

Answer 2

You will need to install IIS or Cassini to host the MVC web site. There's no way around that.

Answer 3

Huh, I would go with Greg's answers.

Also, making your app IIS dependant is not that bad. Or Cassini dependant. You don't want to end up writing your own webserver, which could easily happen when you continue to add features to the app.

I don't know about you but it just feels you are taking all the load on yourself, you are going to spend possibly dozens of hours to implement it to spare an hour or two for someone who doesn't want to install real webserver.