Is it possible to host an ASP.NET MVC2 website from a windows service?

Question

I have a .NET 4 application that runs as a windows service. It runs periodic tasks and provides WCF restful webservices. It already hosts a silverlight web page (via WCF) that allows a user to configure the service.

Now I have a requirement to provide information on HTML/java script pages (e.g. for browsers and platforms that don't support Silverlight). I can serve simple HTML and javascript pages through WCF but that becomes laborious very quickly. I'd like to use MVC2.

Is it possible to provide MVC2 web pages from within a windows service? Or at least use some of the functionality provided by MVC like routing and the view engine?

Or is it more trouble than it's worth and should I head down the path of a separate app hosted on IIS?

Answer 1

You can host the ASP.NET runtime in any type of application including a Windows Service using the CreateApplicationHost method. Although note that by doing this you lose the robustness, security, logging, etc... that a real web server such as IIS provides.

Answer 2

Since you're asking the question about what route to take, I'd host an MVC2 application in IIS. Why recreate a web server using WCF when IIS is already there - and since you're asking, it sounds like that's a viable option.

I agree with Darin's answer that you can host ASP.NET MVC2 in any application, but I think you're going to end up recreating a lot of plumbing that's already in place with IIS.

On the upside, if you go with serving up ASP.NET MVC2 resources in a WCF service application, it may end up rocking and you could have a nice application you can sell on the side. :)