A few years back I developed a Silverlight Component called from within an ASP.net web app, that uses PInvoke to access a USB (Serial COM port) on the client machine to allow for sending commands to some scanner hardware.
With the advent of Windows 10 and the inevitable demise of Silverlight I am looking for alternatives to accessing hardware on the client PC (This is all Intranet Web Application stuff where we have a lot of control over the implementation)
Currently I am looking at Registering an Application to a URI Scheme (Easy solution) as per this page:https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/aa767914(v=vs.85).aspx
OR alternatively maybe Javascript navigator.msLaunchUri (This seems to not be supported in Windows 7, which we need to still support)
Refer: https://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/details/864863/documented-api-function-navigator-mslaunchuri-not-present-in-windows-7
The Registering of an Application to a URI Scheme works fine in Windows 7/8/8.1 but seems to have changed in Windows 10 - Does anyone know how I can implement this (Through C# code, registry, something) to allow this to work in Windows 10
I recently wanted to just this as well - and I found the answer so i'm posting it here for future reference and I couldn't find a working example in C# anywhere.
First of all your app needs requireAdministrator permissions. To do this, right click on the project in the Solution Explorer and click Add New Item, then select General and finally Application Manifest file if you don't already have one. In there, change the requestedExecutionLevel to requireAdministrator. Save.
I this is the first time you've done this, you'll need to restart Visual Studio as it probably isnt running under Admin privaleges.
Okay, so I wanted my app to create the registry key when it starts up, so in the constructor for my form I put in the following code, which creates the URL Protocol foo:// for a program called 'oggsplit.exe' (which I happened to have in my C: root so I just used that for testing)
RegistryKey key;
key = Registry.ClassesRoot.CreateSubKey("foo");
key.SetValue("", "URL: Foo Protocol");
key.SetValue("URL Protocol","");
key = key.CreateSubKey("shell");
key = key.CreateSubKey("open");
key = key.CreateSubKey("command");
key.SetValue("", "C:\\oggsplit.exe");
Once you've configured that, save and run the program. You'll get no feedback, and as long as you don't see any errors it should have worked correctly. Now, open your browser (no need to restart or anything) and go to the address foo://hello. This is what it looks like for me in Google Chrome:
It will then ask you if you want to open your application from the browser, click okay. Hey Presto, your app opens from the browser, you can now put a specilised link into your web page to open your app from the browser. This Page also documents how to pass arguments through to your program as well.
In win10 you can try to use URI handlers. There should be Package.appxmanifest file where you can list URIs that should launch your app.
Also, I found interesting the folowing article that describe web-to-app approach for various OS
Related
I have a Windows service written in c# which keeps listening to one Event Hub in Azure. As soon as a message is received, the service processes the message and does some execution and calculation.
As part of the execution, it launches a application called AutoCal (company's own window's application), which is COM component similar to that of Excel.
Earlier I had a web api which does the same calculation/execution. Upon every request it opens AutoCal and does some processing. I have added the AutoCal DLL as reference in the project.
The code to open AutoCal is something similar:
(AutoCal.Application)Interaction.CreateObject("AutoCal.Application.NewInstance").
When I tested this locally, it has perfectly as expected. But once I hosted this on the server, it has thrown an error saying "Cannot create ActiveX component". To rectify this, I have given permission to open COM components to Application Pool of IIS. This has resolved my issue.
Now that I have a windows service which also open the AutoCal, from where do I give CO component permissions. I have searched for it, but everywhere the solution is for ASP.net only.
How can I rectify this issue for Windows service?
PS: When I have written same code in console application, it is working fine.
Without having exact error logs (can you try looking for related errors in the EventViewer?) it's hard to tell what the problem is.
But I would try the following:
In the start menu type Component services and open it (right click - as admin!)
Go to Component services -> My Computer -> DCOM Config folder
You'll see something like this
Find your COM Application in the tree.
Right click it, open properties, go to Security Tab
It will look like this (never mind the title of the tab in the picture, in your case it should be something like AutoCal):
If it's grayed out, like in my case, you can use the following procedure to change the settings on your system, and make this tab configurable:
Go to Start > Run. Enter regedit
Go to the key that is associated with the DCOM component you want to manage: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\AppID\{XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX}
Right click on it. Select Permissions
Click Advanced
Change the owner to Administrator or your user account
Click OK
Select Full Control for the Administrators group and owner you selected
Go to Start > Run. Search for services.
Find COM+ System Application. Right click on the service, then click Restart
Once you have the Security tab enabled, you can change the permissions for your COM object. For example - you can allow the user, under which your service runs, to access or activate this COM object.
I hope this helps you, but again, without any additional error info - it's a long shot.
You will want to run it under NETWORK SERVICE, but that's not the problem.
What you're experiencing is all summarised under KB257757.
Considerations for server-side Automation of Office
Your best bet is rewrite it in .Net. If its basic and you're NOT using XML, it might be worth giving that format a go. Back in the day we had to make sure everyone (all our customers) were on MS Office 2003 (turned out IBM were the only ones on 2002 and there's a plugin for 2002 to read 2003).
I know this is not good and I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
Microsoft's stance:
Most server-side Automation tasks involve document creation or editing. Office 2007 supports new Open XML file formats that let developers create, edit, read, and transform file content on the server side. These file formats use the System.IO.Package.IO namespace in the Microsoft .NET 3.x Framework to edit Office files without using the Office client applications themselves. This is the recommended and supported method for handling changes to Office files from a service.
In click once application when application check for update from remote location as specified in link. What should i host on remote site example like www.download.com\testapplication dll, exe or any thing else. Do i need to change "will user install from network share or website or dvd" during publish for remote host. Lots of question asked about auto update but not explained how to host remote for update, might be possible i am dumb to get hidden answer.
Im using click-once as deploymentmethod for an Application.
The Application is hostet in our Intranet. (Link refers on *.application)
Each time when im publishing a new Release of my Application, VisualStudio generates/manipulates the Folderstructure automatically.
In my publishing root, there are one Folder and two files
Application Files
setup.exe
XX.application
The folderstructure contains ALL releases of the past and the actual one.
My Settings are
Application is only online availiable
NO! Special options, basically the Optionspage is blank
Im just increasing the Versionnumber. Thats how the depoying works for me.
If a user clicks on the link (.application), the newest release is synced to his PC and then executed.
Unfortunately i'm using a german version of VisualStudio, so im quite sure, Screenshots wont help you a lot.
I wonder what the best way to test and debug facebook iframe applications locally (using the facebook c# toolkit and the azure toolkit)?
When i try to debug it's always starting the Compute Emulator on a different port.
Basically i want to have a special facebook iframe app pointing to a specific port on localhost (e.g. http://localhost:81) and after pushing the debug button that my app url (e.g. http://apps.facebook.com/myspecificappdev) is being started in my browser (with debug functionality).
I found this thread but unfortunatly this didn't help me a lot: http://azuretoolkit.codeplex.com/discussions/207487
What's the best way to debug such applications? Is their maybe a sample project which already has that part set up correctly?
Ok, here is what we do (at Thuzi). We set up an dedicated IIS web site for our code. We create a bogus domain like fbapp.mycompanysdomain.com and then we edit your machine's (or other machine's) Hosts file to point to the proper IP address. When we set up the site in IIS we use a host header which means that we don't need to worry about port numbers. When we debug we simply attach to the process.
So you point your web browser to the FB URL and it should always land on your web server (whether you are debugging locally or not). I know this sounds like a little more work, but it ends up being so much easier in the long run and better reflects what will ultimately happen. I realize if you are using any kind of storage then you will need to start that up, but it's still a lot easier this way..
If your app is simply a website, then you don't need to run the compute emulator to run it. I would setup the site so that it runs on IIS on a specific port, then debug the website project, not the cloud project.
There is a bit more to it than just that however. If you're using development storage then you'll need to start that yourself as it won't automatically be started when you debug the website. If you have a RoleEntryPoint class then you need to be aware that none of that code will be called. Also if you make use of anything in RoleEnvironment (like settings) you'll need to put a wrapper around those items so that they'll still work when not running under the emulation environment (RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable is very useful for detecting this). A setup like this is very useful during development because when you make small changes to CSS of JavaScript you don't need to restart the compute emulator to see your changes.
You're on the right track. You need to create a new facebook app and point the iframe / canvas / tab url to localhost with the specific port cassini chose for the project.
What I did to ensure the the windows azure app stays on the same port:
I placed this as a pre-build event:
"C:\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.4\bin\csrun.exe" /devfabric:shutdown
This makes it better but it's still switching port sometimes
Can we add a windows form in an asp web page.
Like if someone click on a button on web page(.aspx) user receive a windows form (.cs)
and then again switch to each other.
It cannot be done.
The closest thing to do this would be to use Silverlight embedded in the browser.
No there is not any way to do this. Your only option would be for the user to click a link, download an .exe and then have the user launch the application.
The reason for this is that Windows Forms are designed to run on Windows, and run with a different permission set. As such, a web application first of all could be running on a non-windows platform, and secondly, does not have the ability to actually launch an application on the users machine.
In short, no this cannot be done.
You can't embed a windows form application in a webpage.
RIA (Rich Internet Applications) are what HTML 5 is about, and currently flash and silverlight are the closes things to what you are looking for.
As #Mitchel Sellers mentions, you can always link to an exe, save it and execute the downloaded file, but this is far from seamless.
Even if you did add some windows form UI (for eg a message box) to your asp.net application it will only be fired on your web server.. no client will ever get it on their side
I'm not exactly sure why would you need this? But the closest you can get to this is like "Mikael Svenson" said, Silverlight..
Could you provide example of JavaScript function for starting up application installed on your computer from a web browser (eg google chrome 4). It particular if .Net APPs have any special simplifying this process apis of out there are some libs for such staff, please share link with us.
so how to create and store in run on start up programs a small local server which would handel some local urls like http://localhost/maAppServer/MyAppCalculator/Start for starting apps that have written in its config file their names and local urls on install?
So how to start up your C# .NET app\program from web browser?
I don't believe its possible in Chrome, starting an EXE on a users computer could be considered a security violation. Some ActiveX, and file:// links in internet explorer may work. Also, OneClick deployment may do something similar to what you are after (not exactly though I don't think, and I believe they require an add-in which may not be available for Crhome) http://www.15seconds.com/issue/041229.htm
I'm not sure what you're asking for. You can start an application on your computer just by linking to it in the HTML page. However, if you need to pass data to it, then it's a different matter altogether, although it's still simple.
An example is what www.nexon.com does with it's MMORPG, MapleStory. You log on to the website, and the web page starts the game after the authentication. Another example would be the magnet links on file-sharing sites.
You need to create a protocol handler, it can be in any language like C++/C# and register it on the client's computer. Like so - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa767914(VS.85).aspx
Then, just use the protocol you built to pass on whatever data necessary. You can add a link that can be clicked, a button, Response.Redirect() from the server, whatever you like.