Self-host of ASP.NET MVC application

Question

I have a full-working ASP.NET MVC application (consisting of 5 assemblies, .NET 4.5.1, ASP.NET MVC 5.2.2) which runs fine in Visual Studio (which uses IISExpress).

I would now like to have a console application which takes the MVC application and hosts it (self hosting).

I tried with Microsoft.Owin.Host.HttpListener and Nancy.Owin but while I get 404 pages my configurations lacks the mapping to my MVC-app.

I got

public class Startup
{
    public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
    {
        app.UseNancy();
    }
}

and

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        StartOptions so = new StartOptions("http://localhost:9000/");
        using (WebApp.Start<Startup>(so))
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Press Enter to Exit");
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }

But obviously the configuration to use MyMvcApplication from the running MVC application is missing. How to do that? Or how to selfhost it otherwise?

The answers I found on the web refer to older versions and I was hoping to have a more easy way today.

Answer 1

As ASP.NET vNext is not yet available and my app uses MVC5 I would have to migrate the MVC app completly to Nancy or something similar. MVC5 is too dependend on IIS.

To solve this meanwhile I decided on an intermediate solution as performance is not an issue:

My console app creates an IIS config file and launches an IIS express:

        // start IIS
        bool systray = Debugger.IsAttached;
        ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo(iisExecutable, String.Format("/config:\"{0}\" /site:Ecm2.Web /trace:info /systray:{1}", configFile, systray));
        psi.UseShellExecute = false;
        psi.RedirectStandardInput = false;
        psi.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
        psi.RedirectStandardError = true;
        psi.CreateNoWindow = true;

        if (this.iisProcess != null) throw new NotSupportedException("Multiple starts not supported");
        this.iisProcess = new Process();
        this.iisProcess.StartInfo = psi;
        this.iisProcess.ErrorDataReceived += OnErrorDataReceived;
        this.iisProcess.OutputDataReceived += OnOutputDataReceived;
        this.iisProcess.Start();
        this.iisProcess.BeginErrorReadLine();
        this.iisProcess.BeginOutputReadLine();

If someone would like, this is part of the "stop" fragment:

        if (this.iisProcess == null) throw new Exception("Does not look like there was something started yet!");

        if (this.iisProcess.HasExited)
        {
            log.WarnFormat("IIS has already exited with code '{0}'", this.iisProcess.ExitCode);
            this.iisProcess.Close();
            return;
        }

        log.InfoFormat("Stopping IIS instance #{0}", this.instanceId);
        ProcessCommunication.SendStopMessageToProcess(this.iisProcess.Id);
        bool exited = this.iisProcess.WaitForExit(30000);
        if (!exited)
        {
            log.WarnFormat("Failed to stop IIS instance #{0} (PID {1}), killing it now", this.instanceId, this.iisProcess.Id);
            this.iisProcess.Kill();
        }

        this.iisProcess.Close();

To stop the iis process ordinary you should send WM_QUIT to it. This might be helpful for this:

    /// <summary>
    /// Sends a WM_QUIT message to another process.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="pid">PID of the other process</param>
    public static void SendStopMessageToProcess(int pid)
    {
        log.DebugFormat("Sending stop message to PID #{0}", pid);
        try
        {
            for (IntPtr ptr = NativeMethods.GetTopWindow(IntPtr.Zero); ptr != IntPtr.Zero; ptr = NativeMethods.GetWindow(ptr, 2))
            {
                uint num;
                NativeMethods.GetWindowThreadProcessId(ptr, out num);
                if (pid == num)
                {
                    HandleRef hWnd = new HandleRef(null, ptr);
                    NativeMethods.PostMessage(hWnd, 0x12, IntPtr.Zero, IntPtr.Zero);
                    return;
                }
            }
        }
        catch (ArgumentException ex)
        {
            log.Error(String.Format("Failed to send WM_QUIT to PID #{0}", pid), ex);
        }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Provides the native methods to post messages to other windows processes.
    /// </summary>
    internal class NativeMethods
    {
        // Methods
        [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
        internal static extern IntPtr GetTopWindow(IntPtr hWnd);
        [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
        internal static extern IntPtr GetWindow(IntPtr hWnd, uint uCmd);
        [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
        internal static extern uint GetWindowThreadProcessId(IntPtr hwnd, out uint lpdwProcessId);
        [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
        internal static extern bool PostMessage(HandleRef hWnd, uint Msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam);
    }