Category: ASP.NET

In my previous blog I demonstrated how to Self Host ASP.NET Web API, which was a very basic console application leveraging Owin and Katana.

The next step in this series is how to turn your console application into a Windows service.

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Video

If you prefer a video tutorial, here is one I published to YouTube outlining a similar example as on this post.

Windows Service Template

The typical way to create a Windows Service is by using the Windows Service template when creating a new project within Visual Studio.

The template will create a Program.cs calling ServiceBase.Run() in the Main() method.

SelfHostServiceBase is the code that will extend ServiceBase.   You would have to implement OnStart() and OnStop()

That’s simplest possible implementation.  Now when you start debugging, you are treated with this wonderful message.

What this means is you must build your Windows service, start it, then attach the debugger to the process.

Doesn’t sound like a fun way to debug does it?

Topself

There is a great open source project called Topshelf which allows you to create a windows service which is much easier to debug.

Topshelf is a framework for hosting services written using the .NET framework. The creation of services is simplified, allowing developers to create a simple console application that can be installed as a service using Topshelf. The reason for this is simple: It is far easier to debug a console application than a service. And once the application is tested and ready for production, Topshelf makes it easy to install the application as a service.

First thing is to install Topshelf into your project via nuget.

Install-Package Topshelf

Next we need a tiny bit of code to configure our service with topshelf.

We tell topself which class will contain our service (TopselfService) as well as which method to call when the service starts and stops.

Also, you can define which user the service should run as, as well as the name, display name and description.

Now when you debug the application, it will run just like a Console application, in which you can add breakpoints and debug.

To verify my web api application is responding, here is the result from my Postman call

 

 

Source Code

The source code for this demo is available on Github.

Next…

Next up I’ll continue adding to the demo by serving static assets from your self host application.

Over the past several months, I’ve talked to a few people that were completely unaware that you could self host ASP.NET Web Api application without the need for IIS.

Anyone who has worked with IIS knows that sometimes it can feel a bit heavy.  Especially if you not using any other features other than serving static content or executing your ASP.NET Web Api.

There are a couple important aspects to cover first which are what makes self hosting possible.

If you have any questions, please follow me on Twitter.

Follow @CodeOpinion on Twitter

OWIN

OWIN defines a standard interface between .NET web servers and web applications. The goal of the OWIN interface is to decouple server and application, encourage the development of simple modules for .NET web development, and, by being an open standard, stimulate the open source ecosystem of .NET web development tools.

To clarify and reword slightly, OWIN is a open source specification that is not defined by microsoft and is not an actual implementation.

Katana

Katana is an open source project by the Microsoft Open Technologies.  It’s a set of components for building and hosting OWIN-based web applications that follows the OWIN  specification.

I’m not entirely sure what the status is of OWIN/Katana within ASP.NET 5 (vNext), however I would like to think the separation between server, host, middleware, and application will continue.

Video Tutorial

If you prefer to follow along with a video tutorial, take a look at the video below.

Demo

All of the source code for this demo is available on Github.

The first thing we are going to do for this demo is create a Console Application and add the Owin SelfHost and WebAPI Owin Selfhost nuget packages

PM> Install-Package Microsoft.Owin.SelfHost

PM> Install-Package Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.OwinSelfHost

Next, we will create a Startup class that will contain the HttpConfiguration similar to how you configure Web Api currently.   The startup class is the implementation of the OWIN specification that our OWIN Self Host implementation will use.  The Startup class must provide a public Configuration() method with the signature void.

Next, we will create a simple ApiController.

Last step is to add the web server implementation to out Program.cs Main() method.  This is done by simply calling out Katana implementation of WebApp.Start and passing our Startup class name as a type argument along with the host/port binding details as the first parameter argument.

That’s it!  Now when I make a call from Postman to http://localhost:8080/api/demo, here are the results:

 

 

Source Code

The source code for this demo is available on Github.

More

• How-To Create Katana Middlware
• Self Host ASP.NET Web Api as a Windows Service
• ASP.NET Self Host Static File Server