Hosting Web Applications inside a WinForm application?

[Kunle Odutola]

Hi All,

Does anyone have insights into how one might produce a WinForms application
that essentially hosts an ASP/ASP.NET type application within a form (a bit
like Outlook, MS Money, MMC, MSDNHelp etc..).

What I am investigating is if it is possible to write a web application that
can be hosted traditionally using ASP/ASP.NET and, can also hosted within a
WinForm in a fat client app. I accept some basic changes may need to be made
to the web app to work in the latter case.
Kunle

---------------------------------------------------------
"Java isn't platform independent; it is a platform.
Like Windows, it is a proprietary commercial platform. "
- Bjarne Stroustrup

[Paul Mc]

G'day Kunle .

Do you neet the winforms app to interop with the webapp, or just run the
webapp as if your form were ie?

If you don't need the webapp to interact with your winapp, you could just
add the "Microsoft Web Browser" com control (goto cutomize toolbox/com controls
etc). Not particularly elegant, admittedly, but I got my winapp hosting a
webapp like this in about 5 minutes...

If you need the webapp to interact with your winapp, it is going to get a
little messy. You could probably have the webapp referenced, then intercept
and parse/display the webapp responses reasonably easily. Could get ugly
with client side script though...

Luck!
Paul


>
>Does anyone have insights into how one might produce a WinForms application
>that essentially hosts an ASP/ASP.NET type application within a form (a
bit
>like Outlook, MS Money, MMC, MSDNHelp etc..).
>
>What I am investigating is if it is possible to write a web application
that
>can be hosted traditionally using ASP/ASP.NET and, can also hosted within
a
>WinForm in a fat client app. I accept some basic changes may need to be
made
>to the web app to work in the latter case.
>Kunle
>
>---------------------------------------------------------
>"Java isn't platform independent; it is a platform.
>Like Windows, it is a proprietary commercial platform. "
>- Bjarne Stroustrup
>

[Kunle Odutola]

"Paul Mc" <paulmc@nospam.thehub.com.au> wrote in message
news:3b0f9350$1@news.devx.com...

> G'day Kunle .

G'day mate,

> Do you neet the winforms app to interop with the webapp, or just run the
> webapp as if your form were ie?

It isn't really a WinForms app. It's just a container for the UI of the web
app plus some code that allows the web app to run offline. Good examples are
Outlook's UI, MS Money, etc..

> If you don't need the webapp to interact with your winapp, you could just
> add the "Microsoft Web Browser" com control (goto cutomize toolbox/com
controls
> etc). Not particularly elegant, admittedly, but I got my winapp hosting a
> webapp like this in about 5 minutes...

When you say hosting, do you mean in the sense of having an embedded
web-browser control that can access a webserver?
I mean that but in this case, the "webserver" isn't really a webserver but
some locally running service within the application itself.
I expect I will use custom URL protocols as does MSDN and HTMLHELP a la:
ms-help://MSDNVS/vblr7/html/vastmclassx.htm
Which may contain "client-side" script and "server-side" logic. Of course it
is all in the same app.

> If you need the webapp to interact with your winapp, it is going to get a
> little messy. You could probably have the webapp referenced, then
intercept
> and parse/display the webapp responses reasonably easily. Could get ugly
> with client side script though...

It seems only a little messy conceptually but I just wondered it there was
already support for it...

Kunle

[Paul Mc]

G'day [again] Kunle

>When you say hosting, do you mean in the sense of having an embedded
>web-browser control that can access a webserver?

Yeah, basically.

>I mean that but in this case, the "webserver" isn't really a webserver but
>some locally running service within the application itself.

If the service was just spouting back HTML (even with client-side script)
it should be easy enough. Maybe an object making requests of the service
and chanelling the response into the embedded browser may be the easiest
way? ie Bypass the actual physical ASP/ASP.NET page and addressing - bit
more code but the problem I would see otherwise would be any <runat=Server>
code contained in the ASP pages. I imagine that would require some kind of
IIS emulation... I don't know of any controls/libraries to handle this stuff
[hmm, anybody smell a gap in the component market "8-)]

>It seems only a little messy conceptually but I just wondered it there was
>already support for it...

Not that I know of but that certainly doesn't mean "Definitely Not"! <g>

Cheers,
Paul