IISBridge

This is a simple ASP.NET Core app for hosting any web application on a IIS server. It was originally created to host node.js applications on IIS with Windows Auth because there were some issues with iisnode and Windows Authentication.

• ExecutableHandler: This component ensures that the web application executable is always up and running. It starts the executable with configuration provided within Web.config.

• ReverseProxy: Proxies requests from IIS to the port which the web app executable is running on and returns the response. It additionally adds the HTTP-Header x-auth-user with the current user who was authenticated with Windows Auth by the IIS server.

Build

Be sure that .NET Core is installed on your computer

Run the following command within the root directory:

dotnet publish -c Release

This will create a new directory bin\Release\netcoreapp2.2\publish. You need iisbridge.dll, iisbridge.runtimeconfig.json and web.config to run your application later.

Setup

1. Ensure the ASP.NET Core Hosting Module is installed on your server.

2. Copy iisbridge.dll, iisbridge.runtimeconfig.json and web.config into the directory of your web application (which you want to run on iis) and configure iisbridge for your application within web.config:

The following example shows how to run a node application on iis:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <appSettings>
    <appProcessName>node.exe</appProcessName>
    <appProcessArgs>test/index.js</appProcessArgs>
    <appProcessEnv>NODE_ENV=testing</appProcessEnv>
    <appProcessPort>3000</appProcessPort>
  </appSettings>
  <system.webServer>
    <handlers>
      <add name="aspNetCore" path="*" verb="*" modules="AspNetCoreModuleV2" resourceType="Unspecified" />
    </handlers>
    <aspNetCore processPath="dotnet" arguments=".\iisbridge.dll" stdoutLogEnabled="false" stdoutLogFile=".\logs\stdout" hostingModel="InProcess" />
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

It is very important to provide the port appProcessPort which the application is running on. So the iisbridge's reverse proxy knows where to redirect the requests. It is also possible to provide some environment variables or process start arguments appProcessArgs.

3. If you want to use Windows Authentication within your application, be sure that Windows Authentication is enabled and Anonymous Authentication is disabled on your server.

Troubleshooting

If something is not working like expected, it is recommended to set stdoutLogEnabled to true which will log the stdout of your web application executable. There you should be able to figure out any problem really fast.