Execute javascript on IIS server

Question

I have the following situation. A customer uses JavaScript with jQuery to create a complex website. We would like to use JavaScript and jQuery on the server (IIS) for the following reasons:

1. Skills transfer - we would like to use JavaScript and jQuery on the server and not have to use eg VB Script. / classic asp. .Net framework/Java etc is ruled out because of this.

2. Improved options for search/accessibility. We would like to be able to use jQuery as a templating system, but this isn't viable for search engines and users with js turned off - unless we can selectively run this code on the server.

There is significant investment in IIS and Windows Server, so changing that is not an option.

I know you can run jScript on IIS using windows Script host, but am unsure of the scalability and the process surrounding this. I am also unsure whether this would have access to the DOM.

Here is a diagram that hopefully explains the situation. I was wondering if anyone has done anything similar?

EDIT: I am not looking for critic on web architecture, I am simply wanting to know if there are any options for manipulating the DOM of a page before it is sent to the client, using javascript. Jaxer is one such product (no IIS) Thanks.

Answer 1

Have a look at bringing the browser to the server, Rhino, and Use Microsoft's IIS as a Java servlet engine.

The first link is from John Resig's (jQuery's creator) blog.

Update August 2 2011

Node.js is coming to Windows.

Answer 2

The idea to reuse client JS on the server may sound tempting, but I am not sure that jQuery itself would be ready to run in server environment.

You will need to define global context for jQuery somehow by initializing window, document, self, location, etc.. I am not sure it is doable.

Besides, as Cheeso has mentioned, Active Server Pages is a very outdated technology, it was replaced with ASP.Net by Microsoft in the beginning of the century. I used to maintain a legacy system using ASP 3.0 for more than a year and that was pain. The most wonderful pastime was debugging: you will hardly find anything for the purpose today and will have to decript beautiful errors like in IIS log:

error '800a9c68'
Application-defined or object-defined error

Nevertheless, I can confirm that I managed to reuse client and server JScript. But this was code written by me who knew that it was going to be used on the server.

P.S. I would not recommend move that way. There are plenty templating frameworks which are familiar to those who write HTML and JavaScript.