Similar steps could be taken in Visual Studio 2008 to create an installer for an ASP.NET 3.x or 2.0 application.

The process of creating a setup project for an ASP.NET 1.1 application is slightly different and is described in the corresponding article.

Conceptually, creating a redistributable package for an ASP.NET 2.0 application including UltiDev Cassini consists of the following steps:
- Create a regular, non-web, setup project and add it to the solution that has ASP.NET application;
- Add UltiDev Cassini Web Server as a Pre-Requisite to the setup project - to include the reference to UltiDev Cassini components into the Setup.exe bootstrapper generated by Visual Studio 2005.
- Add custom actions to the setup project that register the ASP.NET application with Cassini after installation and unregister during uninstallation;

This will create a distribution package that will ensure that the latest version of UltiDev Cassini Web server is deployed and started on the target machine before your application is installed.

This walkthrough assumes that UltiDev Cassini Web Server for Visual Studio 2005 Developers installed and that you have an existing solution with an ASP.NET application opened in the Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 IDE. In the end you will have a project closely resembling the sample project we provided for Visual Studio 2005.

- Add UltiDev Cassini Web Server 2.0 Pre-Requisite to the setup project. To do that right-click setup project item in the solution tree and select Properties menu item. In the popped-up dialog click Prerequisites button:

Check ".NET Framework 2.0" (3.5 for ASP.NET 3.x projects), "Windows installer 3.1" and "UltiDev Cassini Web Server for ASP.NET 2.0" prerequisites:

Depending on whether you are going to distribute your application via web or ship it on a CD, select an appropriate radio-button in the "Specify the install location for prerequisites" section. This will generate Setup.exe bootstrapper with the built-in knowledge of where to find Cassini in case it's not present on customer's box.

The web project files get added depending on the type of the ASP.NET project in the solution. "Web Site" project, most common in Visual Studio 2005, does not get compiled, so all its files - ASPX markup as well as code-behind C# or VB.NET files - are deemed to be Content Files. "Web Application" project, which is native in Visual Studio 2008 and is an add-on in Visual Studio 2005, compiles code-behind in the DLL and therefore has both binary output and content files.

Please skip this step if your ASP.NET project type is "Web Application".

Add web project's Content Files to the Setup project:




- Create bin folder under the Application Folder:

If your ASP.NET project type is "Web Site", please use previous step instead.

Add web application's "Content Files" and "Primary output" to the Setup project.



After you click OK, bin folder will be added automatically to the "Application Folder". If not, please create "bin" folder manually.

UltiDevCassiniServerConfiguration.dll assembly is a part of UltiDev Cassini package and contains custom installer class that can be invoked from a Setup project to register or un-register an ASP.NET application with UltiDev Cassini.

To add UltiDevCassiniServerConfiguration.dll to your Setup project, using Setup project's File System View, right-click on "bin" folder and select Add | Assembly... In the Open File dialog navigate to UltiDev Cassini folder, which is usually "C:\Program Files\UltiDev\Cassini Web Server for Visual Studio 2005 Developers" (in older versions it could be "C:\Program Files\UltiDev\Cassini Web Server for ASP.NET 2.0"). On 64-bit systems both paths start with "C:\Program Files (x86)".

... and pick UltiDevCassiniServerConfiguration.dll.

UltiDevCassiniServerConfiguration.dll contains routines that register and unregister ASP.NET applications with UltiDev Cassini. After you have added UltiDevCassiniServerConfiguration.dll, your Setup project will look like this:

Start with creating Install, Rollback and Uninstall custom actions in the Setup project, pointing to the UltiDevCassiniServerConfiguration.dll you've just added. To do that switch to the Custom Actions View of the Setup project and right-click on Install, Rollback and Uninstall actions and select Add Custom Action menu.  In the Select Item dialog navigate to the Application Folder\Bin folder and select UltiDevCassiniServerConfiguration.dll for each custom action:


Rename custom actions from UltiDevCasiniServerConfiguration.dll to something more meaningful. The result will look like this:

At this point you hooked up Cassini's installer class to setup project's custom installer actions. Now you just need to pass application's registration information to the Cassini Configuration module. "Install" action requires several parameters, while Rollback and Uninstall steps require only one parameter - application ID. Application ID should be a unique GUID. You can either generate a new GUID using MS Guidegen.exe utility, or better, just reuse an UpgradeCode of your setup project.

To specify application ID for Rollback action, select UltiDevCassiniServerConfiguration.dll under Rollback bin and set CustomActionData property value to /AppID="[UpgradeCode]":

Then repeat the same for the Uninstall action. CustomActionData values for Rollback and Uninstall steps should be identical.

"Install" action has following parameters passed via CustomActionData property:

Parameter		Meaning	Example
/AppID	Required	Application ID	/AppID="[UpgradeCode]"
/AppLocation	Required	Physical location of the application. Should always be set to "[TARGETDIR]\".	/AppLocation="[TARGETDIR]\"
/AppName	Optional	Application Name	/AppName="Test Cassini 2.0 Setup App"
/AppDescription	Optional	Application Description	/AppDescription="some useful text"
/AppPort	Optional	Application Port	/AppPort="80"
Don't specify the port explicitly if possible! Cassini Explorer can redirect user's browser to the correct application URL by application ID if you point the browser to http://<macchinename>:7756/GoToApplication.aspx?AppID=<your application ID>. Web service clients can too call Cassini Explorer web service at http://<machinename>:7756/CassiniConfigurationService.asmx to get your application's URL.
/AppDefaultDoc	Optional if default document is Default.aspx or Index.htm	Default application document	/AppDefaultDoc="WebForm1.aspx"
/AppKeepRunning	Optional	Flag telling if application should always be kept in memory for quick first-page response. Default value is true.	/AppKeepRunning="false"

Another important consideration for the Install action is that it needs to be configured slightly differently in Visual Studio 2005, compared to Visual Studio 2008. The reason is that upgrade scenario flow in MSI packages generated by VS'05 is different from the the upgrade flow of MSIs created with VS'08.

Here's the example of the Install action's CustomActionData value and other settings for the Visual Studio 2005 Setup project:

This is the the example of the Install action settings in the Visual Studio 2008 setup project.

As you can see, the only difference is the value of the Condition property, which is set to "NOT PREVIOUSVERSIONSINSTALLED" for Visual Studio 2008 setup project. This setting essentially makes Install action called only for "clean", non-upgrade installation. It's done because unlike MSIs generated by Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008 creates installers that in the upgrade mode do not call Uninstall custom step of the previous version of the package, essentially bypassing unregistration of your application. It has an upside: your application will remain registered on the same port and there will be virtually no downtime caused by reloading of applications by UltiDev Cassini due to application unregistration/registration sequence of the VS'05 MSIs. The downside is that upgrade scenario, which used to be a rough equivalent of uninstallation of the previous version, followed by installation of the new one, has become more nuanced.

At this point you can test the installation by running Setup.exe.

Additional Setup Project Tips

Real-world deployment project will be a bit more complex than this walkthrough, and even though we highly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the inner workings of the Visual Studio Deployment Project, there are some tips we would like to share.

• Set InstallAllUsers property of the Setup project to True. Since your application will be served by a service that is user-agnostic, there is no reason to make menu shortcuts limited to the installing user.
• Set RemovePreviousVersions property value to True. This will ensure that versions of the same product line are not installed side-by-side. Instead, newer version of the product will replace the older one.
• Set meaningful values to text properties, like Author, Manufacturer, ManufacturerUrl (if you have your web site), ProductName and Title.
• For Visual Studio 2008 and "Web Application" type of the ASP.NET project it is important to ensure that each new release of the web application has higher FileVersion number compared to the previous release. If old and new versions share the same FileVersion, upgrade flow of the MSI will not replace old binaries with the new ones. The easiest way to do that is to remove FileVersion attribute from AseemblyInfo.cs file and make AssemblyInfo attribute looking like this:
  [assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")]  

From this point forward the information in this document is not really related to the Application + Cassini installation topic, but rather just a general tips for your non-IIS web application setup...

If you want to add a Programs menu shortcut to your application, please do the following.
Add an text file to your ASP.NET application project and save with the ".url" extension. The name of the file will be the text displayed by Programs menu, it should reflect the name of your application.


Open the file in text editor and replace its content with the following:
[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://localhost:7756/GoToApplication.aspx?AppID=87C97D89-B993-411D-A0EF-782191F1DBDD

Replace highlighted GUID with your application's actual UpgradeCode property value.
 
The URL in the "My Great Web Application.url" file takes browser to GoToApplication.aspx page of the UltiDev Cassini Explorer, and passes your application ID as a parameter. Cassini Explorer will find port assigned to your application and will redirect the browser to it. This will always correctly invoke your application even though the application will get different ports assigned to it on different machines at the registration time.

Now to work around some kinks of the setup project, add the "My Great Web Application.url" file to your setup project’s User's Programs Menu folder:



Build the solution and install your application. After the installation you should see the shortcut in the Programs menu.



If you need additional information, please visit our support forum, where most common questions have been asked and answered.