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
Related
I am currently developing an integration between a web app and a windows application, where everything works fine on standard setups. However, introducing Citrix to the equation complicates everything quite a bit.
The current solution
At the moment we have a POC (proof of concept) running with custom Uri Scheme registration to a little exe we have developed, and listing active instances with Global Atom (using this trick to list search all entries). This way, we can see if an instance of our application is running. If it is, we call it via SendMessage, and if not, we start the application in a new process, and wait for it to be ready, for us to call it.
The issues introduced with Citrix
Now, when using Citrix Desktop Sessions, we do not suspect we will run into any issues, but with Application Sessions (AKA XenApp) the Citrix documentation states: "URL redirection works only for desktop sessions, not application sessions.", and we have therefor run into a brick wall with our implementation. So to sum up, we now have issues with accomplishing the following steps:
Registering a custom URI Scheme handler: That might not at all be supported. The way we use it now, it points to an application on disk, but the Application is installed on a server.
Detecting if an instance is running: We do not know if Global Atoms are even possible in this setup, and I have been unable to find any documentation on this.
Calling a XenApp window with SendMessage: When running the simplest XenApp configuration we could reproduce, we can inspect the hosting process and get the handle to our application, but the application never gets the message sent at it.
Solving it within the current solution scope
Can the above scenario be accomplished in a Citrix environment using Application Sessions? If so, how? The tests I have performed so far, appears to confirm my suspicions that it is simply not supported within this setup.
Solving it in similar fassion
The POC we have developed is simple and modular, and changing how instances are located and communicated with is easily implemented and made configureable to our clients specific setup. It will then require other ways of detecting, launching and communiting with the primary application.
Just detecting a running application has proven difficult (another question hat has not yet been answered), and the Global Atoms approach does not seem to work.
Launching the app if it is not running, is something I have pretty much given up on, given how many different ways the app can be distributed in such a setup, so it will probably have to be a requirement that the application is already running.
Even though I can retrieve what the handle is for the mainwindow, I am not able to use SendMessage either in a Citrix setup. It simply does not process the message I am sending at it. Is that also something XenApp does not support? I could not find find any documentation on this. Alternative ideas to call into the hosted application are very welcome.
In the end the solution(s) was extremely simple for our citrix customers, as they could either:
Open our software first, launch a browser window from within (we have various links that opens browsers), and navigation now works flawlessly.
Customize a hosted browser application, to run in the same server environment as our software, and then our POC was able to launch our software as though it was a regular desktop environment.
I am running Visual Studio in a VMWare Fusion virtual machine. When I debug my application, VS makes the application available on localhost:50609. I can use it effectively while in the vm itself. However, I would like to access this running instance from a simulated mobile app running in the host machine (an OsX host). This does not work -- the host simply does not see the running instance on the guest.
I started thinking this had something to do with firewalls or the way that the VM networking was set up. But, long story short, I'm pretty sure that the web application is hosted specifically on "localhost", and therefore is inaccessible outside of the localhost itself. Thus, I cannot use the guest OS's IP address on the virtual network to access the site. That is actually true even within the guest OS; i.e., I cannot access the site by using address 192.168.x.x:50609, but I can access it using localhost:50609 (again, this is from the guest, not the host).
So, I am convinced that VS or IIS (I think it's running IIS Express; whatever comes by default with VS 2013) is set up to only allow connections through localhost. That seems like a very good default for security reasons, but in this instance it's not what I want to do.
Can I make this debugged application accessible to an outside machine?
The fact that this is running using VMs is probably quite irrelevant, but I just wanted to give the specific setup. I've disabled Firewalls to test this, so it's not something like that.
[EDIT] The link pointing to how to do this in Web Matrix is useful, but I still lack the final step for how to change the default address in Visual Studio. I think it's only half the answer.
I struggled with this for two days and scoured the interwebs, following several "red herring" leads.
On MY system I finally got it working as expected. The key is that Vagrant (Docker) will not properly forward on 127.0.0.1. You need to set the server to listen on '0.0.0.0'. I knew that from my work with Rails in Vagrant. But it was not easy uncovering HOW to specify this in the DotNet CLI (IIS).
The answer is that you either add this to the call to WebHostBuilder in 'Program.cs' of your project:
.UseUrls("http://0.0.0.0:5000") // Take that, Docker port forwarding!!!
OR call the DotNet CLI like this:
ASPNETCORE_URLS="https://*:5000" dotnet run
I settled on a third option. I set an environment variable:
ASPNETCORE_URLS="https://*:5000"
I want to run an exe on client system from my c# asp.net website. When I use Process.Start()
it throws an error:
The requested operation requires elevation.
How do I set permissions to run that exe?
You can't spawn processes on the client machine from server-side code.
When you use Process.Start in server-side code, it is attempting to execute the process there, on the server where the website is hosted. If you wanted to create processes on the clients computer then you would need to expose a download for them (and not in employing subterfuge, like malign sites might do to install software - supply it gracefully, and normally (and with permission)), or a Silverlight application or something along those lines.
The bottom line is that the code you want to execute (even if that is just to spawn a process) must reside on the client, and be executed there.
You can't run an application from a web server like that. You will have to have the user download the application by supplying the EXE, a setup file or using ClickOnce.
Or you can develop an ActiveX control that you can have the browser automatically download from a Trusted Internet Zone.
Once downloaded, proper signing with a certificate (signed from the trusted (corporate) root certificate) will avoid the user getting a prompt to ask whether he wishes to allow the ActiveX control to install/be activated -
The ActiveX control can subsequently do anything the interactively logged on user could. This means that to actually install a program you'd need to elevate (UAC on Vista+); But if the goal was just to run a standalone executable, you should be good to go.
This all assumes white-hat purposes in a (larger) corporate setting, because it relies on PKI infrastructure and central browser policies, to name just two.**
This would, really, lead to some excellent questions on serverfault or superuser
I noticed you said you wanted to run an exe file on the client, but you didn't say explicitly that the exe is on the server and you want to push it to the client. Everyone seems to be assuming that is the case.
You CAN accomplish this fairly easily with a small JavaScript if you have a few prerequisites:
The executable is already present on the client machine.
All of your clients are running IE
You can enforce a policy to put your site in the Intranet or Trusted
Sites zone.
So basically this means it's a corporate intranet application. I am assuming this is probably the case since, well, if you were expecting to do this with a public app, I would be surprised.
For the script to accomplish this, please see my answer to this question:
How can I get a program on a client machine to run from an ASP.NET page?
I'm currently working on an ASP.Net MVC4 application to automate a production workflow.
my client would prefer the solution to be "zero footprint", so completely running in browser.
One of the issues I can't imagine how to handle is to get data from a weighing scale connected to the client's serial/parallel port from within the page.
(Obviously this can't be done from the web backend ... )
I've been digging around, assuming this could be possible through javascript/jquery, but since this is running sandboxed within the browser, I'm assuming to get stuck that way ...
One of the approaches I considered was writing a self-hosted WCF webservice to run on the client that has the scale attached (hosted by a windows service or console app or so) that exposes the scale readout. Theoretically, that would allow me to consume the webservice in the IIS backend in my MVC C# code and serve it back to the client.
The only issue with this approach is that this would require the application to be hosted locally, where we'd prefer to have it hosted by an external provider.
Is there no way to handle this on the client side exclusively?
I can't imagine I'm the first person running into this, but I can't seem to find what I'm looking for by digging around on the web ...
Any thoughts ?
Thanks in advance! Stijn, Belgium
You absolutely must have a process running on the system that has access to hardware to support reading from any hardware interface. You have a lot of options there- it could be a local service running that can read the serial port and expose a simple HTTP endpoint to the browser. You can also do ActiveX-style controls for IE or browser extensions for Chrome:
http://developer.chrome.com/apps/app_usb.html
Just as a follow-up:
I ended up creating a user-control that reads out the COM-port through PInvoke of CreateFile to open the COM-port ...
Works great, no hassle with an external process running on the client etc ...
Does require full trust in the browser, but that's acceptable, since it'll run on clients under our control ...
grtz,
Stijn
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.