Is There a Way to Make Remote Calls to ASP.NET Development Web Server?

Question

I know that generally speaking, this cant be done, that is get another PC to call a site hosted under the ASP.NET DEvelopment Web Server remotely (generally you can only use localhost:port to get to it).

But I was wondering if anyone has seen, or knows of a way to get around it? I am a RESTful API developer in my office, and I would like the PHP guys to test the APIs on my machine so that I can have the Visual Studio 2005 debugger attached, and I can more easily find problems.

THe main issue is, that my machine is a Vista machine, and unfortunately, the APIs I have developed do not work under IIS7, even Classic Application Pool mode (which eliminates hosting them on a local IIS impossible).

Alternatively, is there a way to use IIS6 on another machine to suite my needs?

Update

Based on the advise that I have gotten and after much trial and error with the suggestions made, I was able to get Squid to act as a reverse-proxy and do exactly what I wanted to do. I have blogged about it http://www.ashleyangell.com/index.php/2009/03/configuring-a-basic-reverse-proxy-in-squid-on-windows-website-accelerator/ in case anyone else wants to do the same thing.

Answer 1

You can debug remotely to a computer with IIS6. Check this blog post on how to set it up: http://blogs.iis.net/brian-murphy-booth/archive/2008/05/23/remoting-debugging-asp-net-applications-using-visual-studio-2008.aspx

Here is a link for vs2005: http://aspnet2holes.blogspot.com/2006/11/debug-aspnet-20-running-under-iis-60.html. I still recommend to check the 2008 one, just for some extra comments it has.

Answer 2

Can't you just run IIS7 in Classic Application Pool mode?

The Development Web Server is strictly limited to Localhost, you would either need to decompile and recompile it, or set up some kind of Proxy on your machine.

And on an unrelated Topic: Even though Win2003 Server SP2 R2 should be supported up to March 2012, maybe IIS7 Support should be added to your application to make sure you can run on 2008 Server as well.

Answer 3

Switching IIS 7 to Classic pipeline does not resolve your compatibility issues? VS 2005 has a remote debugger, as did many versions before that.

Answer 4

You might want to take a look at UltiDev's version of the Cassini web server. They took the Microsoft Open Source Cassini web server and enhanced it to allow among other things, remote connections.

You can attach VS to the process, and watch your RESTful APIs being called from the PHP application, exactly as you describe above.

Answer 5

YES THERE IS! :D

I was also looking around to overcome this limitation for some time and accidentally I stumbled upon following article:

http://eeichinger.blogspot.com/2009/12/sniff-http-traffic-with-aspnet.html

I haven't tried it myself yet, but looks quick & simple (although some may say this is hardcore).
BTW. I recommend you look at some other posts at Erich Eichinger's blog, since there's more really valuable stuff.

Answer 6

This is substantially easier than the Squid option: http://www.pluralsight-training.net/community/blogs/jimw/archive/2009/09/03/accessing-the-visual-studio-asp-net-development-server-from-iphone.aspx

Answer 7

I have just tried http://code.activestate.com/recipes/483732-asynchronous-port-forwarding/ successfully. It's a Python script that just forwards the traffic.

Assuming the machine your dev server runs on is 192.168.42.42 and the dev server is on port 12345, run the script (on the same machine) with the command line arguments

-l 192.168.42.42 -p 8000 -r 127.0.0.1 -P 12345

From a different machine, you can then access the server via http://192.168.42.42:8000.

Be sure to change sender.handle_close as noted by Dwight Walker in the comments:

def handle_close(self):
    self.close()
    if len(self.receiver.to_remote_buffer) == 0:
        self.receiver.close()