UWS.InteractiveServer.XXX.exe allows starting a web site or application from the command line. When command line parameters are specified, the web application will be started automatically and a web browser will be launched pointing to one of application URLs.

Interactive web server is most useful for debugging web applications from within Visual Studio, and for tracing and finding causes of HTTP errors like 404 Page Not Found.

To run interactive web server from the command line, at least PHYSICALDIRECTORY parameter is required.

IMPORTANT: When running web server as an interactive program, application is hosted using current user security context, which is different from using UltiDev Web Server as a service, which runs hosting processes under either Network Service or Local System user.



Usage Examples:

UWS.InteractiveServer.Clr2x86.exe "/path:c:\projects\mywebservice" defaultdoc:Service1.svc" /dirbrowsing:no /browser=C:\Users\john.doe\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"

UWS.InteractiveServer.Clr2x86.exe /path:c:\projects\mywebapp /vdir:therootfolder /port:8569



Command line parameters are not case-sensitive, may start with '/' or '-', but it's not a requirement. Most parameter names have synonyms to simplify usage so you could just guess parameter names (see below). Parameter values are separated from parameter names by either ':' or '=' characters. Don't forget to enclose parameters with whitespaces into double qoutes, like "/dir:c:\Program Data\Whatever Else".

Boolean parameter values can be as follows: 'true' or 'false', 'yes' or 'no', 'on' or 'off', 'allow', 'deny' or 'prohibit', 'start' or 'stop'.


Parameter information:


PHYSICALDIRECTORY, type: String.
Recognized parameter name variations: path, appfolder, folder, applocation.
Description: File system or network path to the folder containing application or site files. It's a required parameter when registering an application, or launching it in interactive server.

VDIR, type: String.
Recognized parameter name variations: virtualdirectory, vpath.
Description: Vritual directory. Default value is '/'.

DEFAULTDOCUMENT, type: String.
Recognized parameter name variations: ddoc, defaultdoc, appdefaultdoc.
Description: Default document to be server when request URL ends with folder name. If not specified, server will look for a document named Index or Default having an extension like Html, Aspx or other web application file extensions. If no such file is found, and directory browsing is enabled, directory document list will be returned.

REALM, type: String.
Recognized parameter name variations: domain.
Description: Realm for Basic or Digest authentication.

COMPRESSION, type: Boolean.
Recognized parameter name variations: compress.
Description: Set to true (default when registering an application) to allow response GZIP compression, provided that request is sent by a client supporting compression. Not all MIME types will be compressed, but HTML, text, XML, JavaScript, CSS and many other types will be compressed.

DIRECTORYBROWSING, type: Boolean.
Recognized parameter name variations: dirbrowsing, folderbrowsing.
Description: Set to true (default is false) to make server return list of files when requested URL ends with a folder name and folder does not contain any default documents.

BYPASSAPPSERVERFORSTATICCONTENT, type: Boolean.
Recognized parameter name variations: bypass.
Description: If set to true (default), requests for static content, like images, CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files, will be served by the web server itself, without giving application a chance to handle the request. Application files, like ASPX, SVC and AXD, are still served by the application. True value is similar to how IIS is confgured by default, and is in contrast to how old UltiDev Cassini and Visual Studio Development Web Server are set up.

IMPERSONATEWINDOWSUSERFORSTATICCONTENT, type: Boolean.
Recognized parameter name variations: impersonate.
Description: If set to true and selected user authentication schema required Windows authenticaiton, web server will use client user's access rights when serving static content files. This can be used to limit which users have access to static content files. When set to false, host process's user security context will be used to access static files to be served.

ANONYMOUSAUTHENTICATION, type: Boolean.
Recognized parameter name variations: authanonymous, anonymous, anonymousauth.
Description: If set to true (default), web server will not require Windows authentication of users in order togive them access to the application. An application can still use forms/cookie-based authentication to implement custom authorization logic to access different part of the application. When set to False, at least one other authentication schema must be chosen.

BASICAUTHENTICATION, type: Boolean.
Recognized parameter name variations: authbasic, basic, basicauth.
Description: If set to true (default value is false) and Anonymous schema is not selected, browser will require user to supply username and password. Web server does not use supplied username and password on its own and application logic would have to make final authorization decision - unless Basic Auth Against Windows setting is also set to true, in which case web server will allow access to the application if client user could be successfully authenticated against Windows.

BASICAUTHENTICATIONAGAINSTWINDOWS, type: Boolean.
Recognized parameter name variations: authbasicwindows, basicwindows, basicwindowsauth, basicauthagainstwindows.
Description: If set to true (default is false) and Basic authentication schema is selected, web server will authenticate client user against Windows before granting access to the application.

DIGESTAUTHENTICATION, type: Boolean.
Recognized parameter name variations: authdigest, digest, digestauth.
Description: If set to true (default is false) and Anonymous schema is not selected, web server will authenticate client user against Active Domain (but not local Windows user credential store). When Digest authentication is employed, browsers and other clients will send user password as a hash, not as an actual text. HTTP.SYS driver deems this situation impossible for the web server or an application to handle, and requires that user credential store could to provide access to hashed password, which AD probably does. But still, HTTP.SYS handles Digest authentication completely on its own, always against an AD, and never delegates to the web server.

WINDOWSNEGOTIATEAUTH, type: Boolean.
Recognized parameter name variations: authnegotiate, negotiate, authwinsnegotiate, authwindowsnegotiate, negotiateauth, winnegotiateauth.
Description: If set to true (default is false) and Anonymous schema is not selected, client will be required to authenticate against Windows using Kerberos. Authentication will fall back on NTLM if client does not support Kerberos.

WINDOWSNTLMAUTH, type: Boolean.
Recognized parameter name variations: authntlm, ntlm, authwinsntlm, authwindowsntlm, ntlmauth, winntlmauth.
Description: If set to true (default is false) and Anonymous schema is not selected, client will be required to authenticate against Windows using NTLM.

PORT, type: Int32.
Recognized parameter name variations: tcpport.
Description: TCP port number for hosting an application. If not specified or set to 0, system will find a free TCP port and use it.

QUERYSTRING, type: String.
Recognized parameter name variations: qs, query.
Description: URL query string to be used when starting web application from the command line. It's the part that usually follows '?' in URLs displayed in browser's address bar.

BROWSER, type: String.
Recognized parameter name variations: bro.
Description: File system path to web browser's EXE. If not specified, default browser will be launched pointing to the web application hosted by this interactive web server. Specify 'none' or 'nobrowser' to start hosting a web application without launching a web browser.

ADDITIONALBROWSERCOMMANDLINE, type: String.
Recognized parameter name variations: broparams, brocmdline, browsercmdline, brocommandline, browsercommandline, additionalbrocmdline, additionalbrowsercmdline, additionalbrocommandline.
Description: Additionial command line parameters for the web browser. Could be used to prevent browsers from merging processes when an application is started.

BROWSERMERGEPROCESSNAME, type: String.
Recognized parameter name variations: mergeprocess, mergeprocessname, bropro, browserprocess, browsermergeprocess.
Description: Name of the in-memory browser process. No need to specify for Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. Process name is used by the interactive web server to detect whether user has closed the browser, indicating that interactive web server should also exit. Without this parameter specified, applicaiton may quit right after being started if there is an existing instance of the browser already running. When browsers are started with a new page URL, they try to find existing instance of the process and hand page to it for rendering, which looks to the web server as if user closed the browser.