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Cassini Desktop Adapter : Standalone Web Applications
rdhatch
#1 Posted : Tuesday, October 23, 2007 10:46:25 PM(UTC)
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UltiDev Team & Fellow Developers,

I give you this:

Cassini Desktop Adapter

* Standalone Web Applications - now on the Desktop
* 100% Embedded Webserver
* No Installation or GAC Required
* No Administrator Privileges Required
* No XML / Configuration Files
* Cassini On-Demand

Now available in 2 Lines of Code:

Code:
Dim myWebServer As New CassiniDesktopAdapter

myWebServer.StartWebServer(myCassiniPath, myWebPath, myDefaultPage)

MessageBox.Show( myWebServer.Port )


Take 5 Minutes - Please Download & Run Demo Standalone Web Application - and see for yourself. No installation or Visual Studio required. Simply click-to-run, like a normal desktop executable. These are full ASP.NET 2.0 applications which embed their own webserver. Additionally - Webserver runs only when your browser is open - Cassini is now On-Demand. After extracting, Please run Standalone Demo.Simple.bat, before running Standalone Demo.Seamless.bat. (Batch files are shortcuts to executables)

This is what you've been waiting for. Use all the popular web development tools & frameworks you know and love - now fully available for dual-deployment to Web and Desktop. Other applications like VisualWebGui and GOA WinForms go from WinForms to Web. Cassini goes from Web to WinForms.

I look forward to everyone's feedback & comments.

Thank you!

Ryan D. Hatch
ryan . hatch konect com
Ultidev Team
#2 Posted : Wednesday, October 24, 2007 8:58:44 AM(UTC)
Ultidev Team

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Super!

Nothing is more more encouraging to us than seeing community members taking over where we left off!

Ryan, have you had a chance to run your application on a clean installation of XP? There might be additional steps necessary, like create "Temporary ASP.NET Files" folder, in case ASP.NET has never been registered on the computer. We will do it on our own, but we recommend trying your application on clean x32 and x64 first systems.

Best regards,
UltiDev Team.
Please donate at http://www.ultidev.com/products/Donate.aspx to help us improve our products.
Ultidev Team
#4 Posted : Wednesday, October 24, 2007 9:18:19 AM(UTC)
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All,

as long as we are talking about non-installation deployment of ASP.NET apps, does anyone want to try repackaging MS Ajax assemblies so it would not require installation? Otherwise, wonderful Ajax cannot be used in the click-EXE-to-run ASP.NET apps.

Best regards,
UltiDev Team.
Please donate at http://www.ultidev.com/products/Donate.aspx to help us improve our products.
rdhatch
#3 Posted : Wednesday, October 24, 2007 9:57:00 AM(UTC)
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Ultidev Team wrote:
Ryan, have you had a chance to run your application on a clean installation of XP? There might be additional steps necessary, like create "Temporary ASP.NET Files" folder, in case ASP.NET has never been registered on the computer. We will do it on our own, but we recommend trying your application on clean x32 and x64 first systems.


Yesterday, I had my client run Simple.bat - and it worked beautifully.
The local ASP.NET application opened up in his browser.

He is an end-user, not a developer. Thus, I would highly doubt his machine has ever had ASP.NET installed. Additionally, His computer is part of a very large corporation with very tight security policies. Yet - our Standalone Web Application ran on his machine without a hitch. That says a lot.

It does, however, require that .NET Framework 2.0 be installed.

I would love to hear from other people - What successes & problems have people had?

Quote:
as long as we are talking about non-installation deployment of ASP.NET apps, does anyone want to try repackaging MS Ajax assemblies so it would not require installation? Otherwise, wonderful Ajax cannot be used in the click-EXE-to-run ASP.NET apps.


I'm not an MS Ajax guy - can someone else help us here?

Ryan
rdhatch
#5 Posted : Thursday, October 25, 2007 11:58:56 AM(UTC)
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I have now integrated VisualWebGui into the standalone environment.

Please Download my CatalogDemo Example. In this example, I demonstrate the VWG CatalogDemo Web.Form deployed as a standalone Desktop application - running in full ASP.NET mode. Nothing to install. No webserver to configure. This is a new technology, and I wanted to share it with everyone.

Please give it a try, and let me know how it works for you. Thank you!

Ryan
Ultidev Team
#6 Posted : Thursday, October 25, 2007 7:13:36 PM(UTC)
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Ryan, again, great job!
We have tested it a bit and found a few things to be aware of:

1. Vista issue [Updated]. UltiDev Cassini, when running in no-installation mode under Vista, is failing to get browser's process handle. It starts the browser, but acts as if browser process failed to start: Cassini quits and browser gets launched pointing to the URL that is no longer valid. So far no viable workaround was found. It is possible to launch Cassini serving the app with "nobrowser" command line parameter, but it is of no use for end user if browser cannot be launched automatically. Also, we found that if Firefox is installed and specified as a browser ("%ProgrmaFiles%\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" for browser cmd line parameter), then application launches successfully.

2. Windows Firewall nagging. Since normally Windows Firewall exceptions get created during UltiDev Cassini installation, running Cassini as embedded server will bring the nagging. This may be changed in the next release of UltiDev Cassini.

3. Event Source. Since Windows Event Log source for UltiDev Cassini gets created at installation time, no events/error get logged into Event Log. This may be fixed in the next release.

4. Reduced security. When Cassini runs, it can accept requests from remote machines. When Cassini is running under interactive user account, which is often has administrative privileges, there is a danger of remote malicious program scanning ports and funding Cassini on it. Should you application get breached, an attacker may get a complete control over host system. To minimize exposure, please lock down your application by making it accepting only local requests.

Best regards,
UltiDev Team.
Please donate at http://www.ultidev.com/products/Donate.aspx to help us improve our products.
rdhatch
#9 Posted : Friday, November 2, 2007 4:12:45 PM(UTC)
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News Update

Temporary Solution for Windows Vista compatibility (without Admin privileges).

Download Code Example: http://www.mediafire.com/?3wljjlhl90p

Note : This uses VisualWebGui on top of ASP.NET 2.0. To run this example, you will need the VisualWebGui SDK installed. VisualWebGui applications can be deployed standalone (without SDK) by copying VWG GAC files into the /bin folder of the web site.

License: Free to distribute & use. This code comes from another developer (Terricide) in the VisualWebGui and VistaDB forums. Thanks, Terricide.

Hope this helps other developers here.

Ryan D. Hatch
Dave
#7 Posted : Thursday, February 14, 2008 11:10:49 AM(UTC)
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Ultidev Team wrote:

1. Vista issue [Updated]. UltiDev Cassini, when running in no-installation mode under Vista, is failing to get browser's process handle. It starts the browser, but acts as if browser process failed to start: Cassini quits and browser gets launched pointing to the URL that is no longer valid. So far no viable workaround was found. It is possible to launch Cassini serving the app with "nobrowser" command line parameter, but it is of no use for end user if browser cannot be launched automatically. Also, we found that if Firefox is installed and specified as a browser ("%ProgrmaFiles%\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" for browser cmd line parameter), then application launches successfully.


I was having trouble with getting it to run off the flash drive, the browser kept crashing as per above, although it ran perfectly on the computer directly.

I thought I'd share my solution to this problem as I noticed above that the Ultidev stated there is no known solution so far.

What I did was create 2 batch files. The first one copies the 2nd batch file to the c:\ root and executes the file from c:\. The copied file from c:\ then runs the webserver off the flash drive and deletes itself.

MyBat1.bat

copy .\Setup\MyBat2.bat c:\
CALL c:\MyBat2.bat %cd%

MyBat2.bat

%~d1\Cassini\ultidevcassinwebserver2.exe /run "%~d1\WebApp"
del C:\MyBat2.bat

I don't understand why running it off the computer works but off the flash drive it doesn't, but this solution works great for me. This is based on rdhatch's method of deployment.

Cheers

Dave
rdhatch
#8 Posted : Thursday, February 14, 2008 11:19:51 AM(UTC)
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Dave wrote:
I was having trouble with getting it to run off the flash drive, the browser kept crashing as per above, although it ran perfectly on the computer directly.

I thought I'd share my solution to this problem as I noticed above that the Ultidev stated there is no known solution so far... this solution works great for me...

Cheers

Dave


Great work, Dave! Thanks for finding a fix to the Vista problem. And awesome to hear you have flash-drive working.

We now have one-click, stand-alone ASP.NET apps working from flash drives!

I am currently using UltiDev Cassini in one-click, stand-alone mode to deploy a VisualWebGUI application using LLBLGen as the backend ORM on XP desktops in an Enterprise environment.

Keep us posted on anything else you find. Thanks again -

Ryan
Ultidev Team
#10 Posted : Thursday, February 14, 2008 11:24:30 AM(UTC)
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Dave,

Thanks much for sharing your solution!

One thing we can suggest is to replace hard-coded "c:" in your BAT files with %SystemDrive% environment variable.

Best regards,
UltiDev Team.
Please donate at http://www.ultidev.com/products/Donate.aspx to help us improve our products.
rdhatch
#11 Posted : Thursday, February 14, 2008 11:38:28 AM(UTC)
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By the way - This is cool.

We can now run ASP.NET apps without a browser. Very similar to the Windows WebBrowser control, which is just Internet Explorer without the surrounding UI (no back buttons, etc).

http://wiki.mozilla.org/WebRunner
http://blogs.cnet.com/83...ed&subj=TheOpenRoad

Ryan
fredd
#12 Posted : Saturday, February 23, 2008 5:47:05 PM(UTC)
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Hi Folks,

Sorry to burst bubbles here but I suspect the Vista machines you've been working with are not virgin. I'm running on a virgin machine with no messing around with the UAC or anything else.

There is no way that the launch from a Flash drive works. That I can confirm. Vista's permissions simply do not allow it. It's seen by Vista as a foreign application, I think and therefore it is trying to cross security boundaries that Vista won't allow.

Also, if you try to launch from C: or any other drive, particularly under .NET 1.1, permission is denied for access to the temp folder of the framework. It appears that Vista simply does not allow direct access to that folder and it seems that, because the UltiDev Request Processor dll is not registered, there is no permission being granted to it to make such access.

Further, I tried the suggestion of starting from C: via a .bat file and it, too, doesn't work for the same reason. I tried with both 1.1 and 2.0 frameworks and the appropriate files provided by Ryan Hatch.

And there's more. When the flash launches, Vista throws up its permission dialogs. In the meantime, UltiDev continues trying to launch and fails to find the web page, because the user is busy trying to make his/her way through those dialogs.

If anyone has any solution to this, I'd be most interested in hearing about it. I may be doing something wrong, but I've tried about everything I can think of.

Also, if anyone has a simple example of their solution running on Vista, please post it and I will try it promptly and report back to you.

Regards,
Fred
rdhatch
#13 Posted : Saturday, February 23, 2008 9:02:24 PM(UTC)
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Hi Fredd,

Thanks for the post. My users are not using Vista, so I cannot guarantee my solution there. I do, however, guarantee my solution on XP with non-administration users.

The best solution, both for XP and for Vista, is a .DLL of Cassini. So, your application would have full control over the starting and stopping of the webserver. Vlad has said that a .DLL version is on its way. Other Cassini versions (within my November 2nd post above) already offer a .DLL version. A .DLL version of Cassini will allow you to create your own application that starts/stops the webserver compactly from within your C#/VB code. Essentially, it would offer an API for the Cassini ASP.NET webserver. There should be no need for an external executable with command-line arguments.

Vlad - any timeline you can offer us? Thank you,

Ryan
fredd
#14 Posted : Monday, February 25, 2008 7:35:16 AM(UTC)
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Hi,

Unfortunately, DLL or not, I don't think the solution you suggest is going to work on Vista, plain and simple. The reason is the new cross-domain (cross-boundary) limitations imposed by Vista which will not allow a non-registered DLL access into the runtime .NET framework folder.

By the way, if the UAC is turned off, Vista will allow such access, but, of course, you shouldn't ever turn off UAC.

Regards,
FredD
mooseman
#15 Posted : Thursday, February 26, 2009 9:09:24 AM(UTC)
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Wouldn't happen to have a c# version of this, would you?
Ultidev Team
#16 Posted : Thursday, February 26, 2009 11:39:40 AM(UTC)
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Hello,

If you are asking about set of binaries allowing UltiDev Cassini to run standalone apps, please contact rdhatch.

Best regards,
UltiDev Team.
Please donate at http://www.ultidev.com/products/Donate.aspx to help us improve our products.
rdhatch
#17 Posted : Saturday, April 25, 2009 8:15:02 AM(UTC)
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Hi Everyone,

Just an update here. I have this working on Vista now, as well.

Please see my Screencast here: http://visualwebgui.com/...cope/posts/Default.aspx

Hope this helps!

Ryan
Ultidev Team
#18 Posted : Sunday, April 26, 2009 8:09:56 AM(UTC)
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Ryan,

Lost of folks are interested in the possibility of running ASP.NET apps in Vista from a removable drive, like flash or CD. Your screencast shows that the ASP.NET app can run from a local hard drive under UltiDev Cassini without having to have Cassini installed, but that was not in doubt for quite a while. There seems to be a consensus that EXEs from removable drives can't be launched on Vista with UAC turned on. Do you have any insights on this one?

Best regards,
UltiDev Team.
Please donate at http://www.ultidev.com/products/Donate.aspx to help us improve our products.
rdhatch
#19 Posted : Sunday, April 26, 2009 9:07:45 PM(UTC)
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I have disabled UAC on my Vista to get this to work. This demo screencast was mostly for the Visual WebGui Community.

Enabling UAC stops Cassini immediately after it starts. It has nothing to do with removable drives. I've tried it on my hard drive, same problem - Cassini stops immediately

Not the news you were probably hoping for. However, I'm not an expert on Vista security issues. Perhaps someone can get around opening a localhost port.

Hope this helps!

Ryan
Ultidev Team
#20 Posted : Monday, April 27, 2009 5:20:43 AM(UTC)
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Thank you, Ryan.

Just wanted to confirm that Vista with UAC on is still a problem.

Best regards,
UltiDev Team.
Please donate at http://www.ultidev.com/products/Donate.aspx to help us improve our products.
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