Add a web front end to a winform application - c#

I've written a c# .NET winforms application I'm quite happy with.
Now I came to the conclusion, that it would be great to control this app also over the internet.
My idea is to just include a webserver into the EXE that will show the GUI of the app in a webbrowser also.
what would be the easiest way to do so? This is a hobbiest project, so I don't want to pay for commercial solutions.
Thanks in advance!
Markus

Unfortunately or fortunately including a webserver in your EXE is definitely NOT the way to go here. In fact it won't and can't work that way.
What you need to do is separate out your business logic (the code that does the processing for your application) from your UI (the winforms control parts) in such a way that you can build a web front end that connects to your business logic. If done properly you can use the same business logic for both UI's. Your web front end will have to be hosted on a webserver somewhere but a winforms app can't be hosted in a web browser... it just doesn't work like that.
Read up on N-tier programming or the MVC pattern to get started down this direction.

Related

running an application inside ASP.NET

I've written an application in C# that I would now like to host within an ASP.NET website (MVC 2).
The application can become quite resource intensive so I would like to set up the system in such a way that each user downloads the application and runs it locally, but still within the web page that I provide.
My first idea to solve this problem was to host the program within a silverlight application. However, the app I want to host was not compiled for Silverlight, and I would like to use MySQL in it, which also appears to not be possible directly (ie without a web service in between).
The bottom line is that don't have experience with these things directly yet, and I need to research the way to make any solution possible. So I would really appreciate some input to put me in the right direction, and not have to implement 3 wrong options before finding the right one. I would also really like to avoid JavaScript if at all possible.
Thanks in advance.
Update
I probably should have specified to begin with what the application is exactly.
The application as I want to host it on the website is a simple chat program. It needs an input box and text output. The old windows forms application won't have to run in ASP, but I want to use the class library behind it, which is a chatbot engine. That engine is the part that can be rather resource intensive.
So you wrote a "rich client" application and you want to serve it as a web/silverlight application. This is not possible without changing the architecture of your app, as you probably guess, expecially because you have to interface a database. If rewriting the application to support such architecture is not an option, the best in order to me is to use Remote Desktop, but you have to pay for licenses in order to support many connections.
If your application is not a web application then it will not run on the server. The only thing your server does is to provide a download location. For that, you wouldn't need a MVC site - static pages could fit. The programming model between normal applications running on the client and server applications running on IIS is completely different. So in short: you won't be able to host your client application in ASP.NET MVC. If this is a requirement you will end up rewriting the application.
If your application is ASP.NET WebForms and it becomes too resource hungry, then you probably won't solve it by just switching to MVC. You have different options then: more resources on the server side, analyzing what could be done to lower the resources required or moving away from a server based application. This is not a black/white decision, maybe a combination might fit.

Common code for desktop application and web

What I am looking for is a way to write the UI once and get the same running both in browser and on desktop.
We would like to use C# and SQL Server / MySQL as DB. Can you suggest the best way to code in c# to make this work
We are thinking of writing forms in WPF and then writing a wrapper to show as an application and to show as a webpage too. is it practical as we do not have experience in working of WPF
I don't think writing a wrapper around WPF application will solve your problem. You can convert WPF application to Silverlight (Which is for web) , but there are limitations.
Here is a good question for that : Convert WPF Application to SilverLight
One better way of doing it is layered architecture. You can write a data access layer and a business layer, Then you can have separate UI layer for both Web applications and desktop applications. Make your solution as loosely coupled as possible and this will help in having separate applications for desktop and web.
It's not possible to reuse a WPF application as a Web application. A Web application has a totally different setup then WPF. Web uses stateless HTTP while WPF runs completely on a clients computer.
Your best bet is to make sure you can reuse as much of your code as possible. By using a layered architecture you can create two applications that only differ in the User Interface layer.
Then you can optimize for both platforms but have a single shared code base for all other aspects of your application.
we need the rich experience of desktop, and accessibility of web application too
I suggest that you take a look at Silverlight. It runs in the browser and deploys seamlessly like any web page. And you get a "richer" client experience compared to a true web application.

How to add Windows Form to web page?

I am new to .NET so I have a basic question to ask, is there a way to add Windows Forms application to my web page, as creating forms was easy and I created my app in the form format now I want to add them to asp.net page.
It's a different thing, but you might want to look into the silverlight out-of-browser technology.
http://www.silverlight.net/learn/overview/out-of-browser-applications/out-of-browser-applications-(silverlight-quickstart)
Spend good time on w3schools.com learning about <form> tags..
then gradually move on towards processing data at backend using C#
a good starting point can be http://www.deitel.com/articles/csharp_tutorials/20060128/index.html
Long way to go..first get your basics right!!
If you have basic knowledge of html, then you can learn the basics of asp.net too. Then you can easily create a web form which exactly matches your windows forms. But always keep it in mind, webforms are not as flexible as windows forms.
well... there are something you can do that is similar.
You can add your windows-form to an BHO and install it in you webBrowser as an ActiveX object (for a IE) or extension (in other browsers), and then share it to everyone you want. Then your win-form application can start and interact with your web-page.
You can start looking here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb250436(v=vs.85).aspx
hope it help.
Windows form cannot be added in a web form. They altogether are a different technology. You can add link in your web app for downloading Windows app.

Creating a Web Wrapper for COM and OCX

Today we have a windows application that, using an OCX, creates a web page (visible by a WebBrowser control in a small .NET WinForm application) and communicates through COM to the main application/client. (not relevant but this is Pascal)
I'm currently responsible to re create this application in a web environment so we can have the same functionality shared through Web as the user can see the same in a Web Browser.
The Windows application has almost 4 years on it and I need to re create everything from scratch, and all the bugs/features find in the future in the Windows Application I have to re create them again in the Web...
Ohh well, you can see where this will end.
I was thinking... is there any way I can create a Wrapper, even using 3rd party commercial objects, to:
Communicate with the COM Object
Can expose the content of the OCX
(this in my most confortable language, ASP.NET C#, but other are welcome)
I was thinking out loud, can this be accomplish with a Java Applet? Silverlight 4?
Any ideas or any point to the right road will be appreciated.
You may want to consider using Silverlight 4. Although it's not fully baked (Microsoft announced it as Release Candidate status yesterday or today) it has COM support but will run in a web enabled way.
The fact that your previous application is Windows/OCX tells me that the chief weakness of this approach, which would be platform neutrality, is less of an issue.

Can an exe compiled from C# be integrated into a website?

I'm a beginner in programming. I've just made a program called "Guessing Game". And it seems to work fine. Can I integrate it into a website? The CMS that I'm using is Mambo.
===
additional info's
Thanks for all your suggestions.
I still don't have any background about Silverlight, WPF and Java Script which I think sounds good. I'm using Windows and I programmed my "Guessing Game" from Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and it's using Window application forms.
Yes I guess, for the moment I let it be and start to learn Silverlight or Java Script so that I can integrate it on my website:-)
Thanks for all your input guys:-)
Cheers
A standalone executable cannot be directly integrated into a website. You have a few choices though:
Allow your users to download the executable and run it locally for themselves
Rewrite your program in JavaScript to have it run directly inside of an HTML page, though this could obviously involve a fair amount of reworking
Use Microsoft's Silverlight technology, which allows you to code in C# and produce a web-based frontend similar to Adobe Flash. Your program logic should remain the same and you should only have to change the UI code. In fact if you're already using WPF for the front end, the transition will be even easier.
There are several questions that you still need to answer.
What is your server running? If its not Windows, your exe will not run at all unless it is compatible with Mono or a similar framework for your server's operating system.
How does your "Guessing game" interact with the user? If it is through a WinForms GUI, it will you will not be able to use that GUI on the web. If your game is a WPF application your easiest route may be to port it to Silverlight and serve it up on a web page.
It is typically not trivial to make a regular windows application run in a web environment since on on the web you are really running in the browser, not on Windows.
Yes - in general, when you're talking about software, anything is possible. The question is, how difficult will it be?
To understand that, you have to give us more details about "Guessing Game" including how it is designed, what it's interfaces are, how readily extensible it is, and how prepared you are to change or extend it.
For example, if it is a Windows Forms GUI app, then it will be diifficult to integrate into a web app. If it is a console app, then it will be a little easier. If you can modify it to run as a Windows Service, then a little easier. If you can modify it to accept input from the network (as opposed to getting input solely from the keyboard + mouse), still easier.
You may be able to use reflection to load your assembly into the web application, but most likely, the answer is no.
Your best solution is probably to re-write the game in javascript.
The short answer to your question is now. I'm presuming that since you're running Mambo you're web environment is a LAMP stack. However, you're "Guessing Game" is most likely a Windows application from the sound of it. For a beginner in programming, there is no integration path you're going to be able to take that will allow you to have your game running on your website.
However, here are avenues you can take, which will require a significant amount of time to learn. I'm not saying you shouldn't take time to learn, by all means you should! I'm simply trying to illustrate the fact that this is not something that is going to be doable in a couple of hours.
Silverlight - allows you to run C# code with a WPF like interface on your client's browser and can integrate with your web site through javascript.
Let your client download it from your website and run it off of their PC. This would actually be fairly trivial and would be your quickest option, but it sounds like it's not the kind of integration you were looking for.

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