如何将控制台C＃应用程序添加到ASP.NET WebSite？

Question

My question is somewhat similar to this thread : How to include another project Console Application exe in an Asp.Net website?

I was however directed to ask a new question since my question wasn't answered and I could not comment on that thread.

So, my situation is this: I have a C# application that is compiled to an exe (for now). It works fine as a desktop app. Now I need to host the application on a website such that users can use it via their browsers.

I thought asp.net would be a good place to start and created a WebSite application. Now how do I go about referencing the C# application files so that I can call those methods from the new WebSite application?

I've tried to include post build events on the console app to copy the files to the WebSite folder, but I'm still unable to reference them.

Any other suggestions for what I'm trying to do also welcome :)

EDIT: I want to the application to be run on the server, the output of which I will then display on the user's browser.

Answer 1

Assuming I understand what you want:

1- You need to transfer your functionality to a Class Library project.

2- Add Reference to DLL in your website

3- Use the functionality as you like.

But, what you can't use is the functionality from assembly file of type .exe directly.

Answer 2

If you do not need to run the console application and just need to used the methods that is defined inside the console application then I would refactor those methods inside a separate class library and then add a reference to the class library in my web application. Then build an interface into the webpage that calls the appropriate methods.

Here is a walkthrough from MSDN showing you how to Create a web application project with a class library

Answer 3

You should not run the console application on the server as that is BAD! On Windows creating a whole new process for every request is not a good idea.

Refactor the console application to either take a TextWriter or (better in my opinion, but may take more refactoring) return the result in some logical fashion.

In an extreme case you could get away with just sending in Console.Out to the library and Response.Output.

It seems unlikely you would really just want to do that, but it may be the least thing you can get away with that isn't really bad.

Think along the lines of Console.WriteLine("Hello World") going to:

var lib = new MyLib(Console.Out);
lib.DoSomething();

ctor in this case is:

public MyLib(TextWriter writer)
{
  _writer = writer;
}

where DoSomething() is:

public void DoSomething()
{
   _writer.WriteLine("Hello World");
}

On the web you would then output what you need to output and put your output there by first outputting a <pre> tag and then doing this:

var lib = new MyLib(Response.Output);
lib.DoSomething();


public string TellMeSomething()
{
  return "Hello World";
}

I almost don't want to recommend this as I think fully refactoring it to something would be better. So DoSomething becomes TellMeSomething and the implementation something like:

public string TellMeSomething()
{
  return "Hello World";
}