Adding self-hosted Asp.NET MVC 5 into an existing Winforms/console project

Question

How do I add a selfhosted Asp.Net MVC 5 application inside my existing Winforms project? I already have the self-hosted mvc 5 app working fine as a separate console app.

But,now I need to load this MVC 5 project into a subfolder of my existing Winforms application and I need make calls to my existing business logic classes inside the controller.

Answer 1

On the web about adding MVC support to an existing WebForms application. The two play nicely side-by-side in the same project

First you would need to make your MVC project a portable area. Details about this can be found here. A Portable Area is a dll that contains items that would normally be part of your solution. Portable Areas contain Views, Controllers, Models, even JS Scripts, CSS files and images.

Disadvantages of a portable Area:

Every time you make a change to any View, JS File, CSS File, or image within your Portable Area, you will need to rebuild it. I emphasize these components because they do not normally need to be rebuilt when being tested or developed.

This can become a problem. If you find yourself re-building every time you tweak CSS, 30 second changes become 2 minute changes. Make 30 of those and you've stretched 15 minutes worth of work into 2 hours.

Next, you need to update your web.config file. Replace the default compilation section with the following:

<compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0">
<assemblies>
    <add assembly="System.Web.Abstractions, Version=4.0.0.0, 
         Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
    <add assembly="System.Web.Routing, Version=4.0.0.0, 
         Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
    <add assembly="System.Web.Mvc, Version=2.0.0.0, 
         Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
</assemblies>

Also add a pages element with the namespaces shown:

<pages>
    <namespaces>
        <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc"/>
        <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Ajax"/>
        <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Html"/>
        <add namespace="System.Web.Routing"/>
    </namespaces>
</pages>



<system.webServer>
  <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false"/>
  <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"/>
</system.webServer>

and add the MVC HTTP handler and a binding redirect for MVC:

<httpHandlers>
    <add verb="*" path="*.mvc" 
        validate="false" type="System.Web.Mvc.MvcHttpHandler,
        System.Web.Mvc, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, 
        PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
</httpHandlers>

<runtime>
    <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
        <dependentAssembly>
            <assemblyIdentity name="System.Web.Mvc" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" />
            <bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.0.0.0" newVersion="2.0.0.0" />
        </dependentAssembly>
    </assemblyBinding>
</runtime>

Now in our Global.asax file we need to register the portable area:

public class SomeHybrid: System.Web.HttpApplication
{
    public static void RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilterCollection filters)
    {
        filters.Add(new HandleErrorAttribute());
    }

    public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
    {
        routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

        routes.MapRoute(
            "Default", // Route name
            "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
            new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
        );

    }

    protected void Application_Start()
    {
        AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();

        RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);
        RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
    }
}

Now, at this point I can visit both pages. The WebForms page is a file on disk, so ASP.NET routing passes requests directly on to this page when I /default.aspx. The ASP.NET Routing engine is engaged so I can also hit /Home/Index.

If I want to get fancy, You can add a PageRoute so You have pretty URLs when visit my WebForms pages as well. Just add a route in the Global.asax like this. Make sure that simple routes like these come first, as the default ASP.NET MVC route is very "greedy" and would gobble up a simple URL like /calculator

routes.MapPageRoute("WebFormThing", "Calculator", "~/Default.aspx");