How to populate an ASP.NET web page from a desktop application.

Question

Hi All,

I am a Windows Application Developer with very basic web development experience. We are developing a Windows desktop application in .net that monitors and controls some processes over the network. I am thinking of giving a web interface to this application - meaning user can access some part of data from a web browser. (e.g. Showing the status of processes as a start, controlling them will be the next part)

The desktop application already has all the logic/graphics required. I just want to add this web interface so that users can access the status (or similar information) from a remote machine that doesn't have desktop application installed. I was thinking of using IIS as a web server instead of writing my own. The data to web page will be provided by the desktop application. Note that there is NO database in this application. The process-status is monitored in real-time and is not stored anywhere. How should I approach this?

Any pointers in this direction will be helpful.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You're right, there's no need to write your own server. With minimum changes, make your desktop app web-aware in a way that it refreshes data on the web server at regular intervals. This data doesn't need to be stored in a database. You can save it to a data file (XML, for instance) or just keep in the web application memory. One thing is for sure, you'll need to re-build your graphics interface from ground up in HTML/CSS.

Remember, this is a very quick-and-dirty and exploratory solution. Consider moving your logic code to the web, or isolate it in assemblies that could be used in both desktop and web application contexts.