Written by In experimenting with NWSGI yesterday, I found I wanted the ability to launch the development web server that ships with Visual Studio (WebDev.WebServer.exe) from the command line. I hacked up the following PowerShell function and dropped it into my $profile so I can easily launch the web server in any directory any time I need. Thought I’d share:
function webdev($path,$port=8080,$vpath='/')
{
$spath = 'C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\DevServer9.0\WebDev.WebServer.EXE'
$rpath = resolve-path $path
$params = "/path:`"$rpath`" /port:$port /vpath:$vpath"
$ignore = [System.Diagnostics.Process]::Start($spath, $params)
"Started WebDev Server for '$path' directory on port $port"
}
There’s probably an easier way to launch an exe with parameters than Sys.Diags.Process.Start, but it works. Using resolve-path is the key, that lets me pass in a relative path on the command line, but the script converts it to an absolute path in order to pass it to the webdev server. Also, I’m not sure I should have hard coded the path to the exe, but again it works and it’s not like it’s tough to change.
Enjoy.
Update: Tomas Restrepo pointed out an easier way to start the process:
&'C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\DevServer9.0\WebDev.WebServer.EXE' "/path:$rpath" "/port:$port" "/vpath:$vpath"
I couldn’t figure out how to correctly launch the exe when the physical path to serve has a space in it. Thanks Tomas.
Pretty cool Harry. There’s actually an easier way of running it, something like this would work just fine:
&’C:Program FilesCommon Filesmicrosoft sharedDevServer9.0WebDev.WebServer.EXE’ “/path:$rpath” “/port:$port” “/vpath:$vpath”
I wrote a similar function some time ago. It’s a bit longer, but it works on x64, and on machines with only .NET FW 2.0 installed:
# Start-WebDevServer
function TryLocateWebDevServer($EnvVar, $SubPath) {
$e = ‘env:’ + $EnvVar
if (Test-Path $e) {
$wdpath = Join-Path (Get-Content $e) (Join-Path $SubPath ‘WebDev.WebServer.EXE’)
if (Test-Path $wdpath) {
return $wdpath
}
}
return $FALSE
}
function Start-WebDevServer($Path, $Port=8080, $VPath=’/')
{
if (-not $Path -or -not (Test-Path $Path)) {
Throw “Invalid Path specified!”
}
$locations =
(‘CommonProgramFiles(x86)’, ‘Microsoft SharedDevServer9.0′),
(‘CommonProgramFiles’, ‘Microsoft SharedDevServer9.0′),
(‘SystemRoot’, ‘Microsoft.NETFrameworkv2.0.50727′)
foreach ($l in $locations) {
$wdpath = TryLocateWebDevServer $l[0] $l[1]
if ($wdpath) {
break;
}
}
if (-not $wdpath) {
Throw ‘Cannot locate WebDev.WebServer.EXE!’
}
$rpath = Resolve-Path $Path
Write-Host “Starting WebDev.WebServer located at:”
Write-Host ” $wdpath”
Write-Host ” Parameters: “”/path:$rpath”" “”/port:$Port”" “”/vpath:$VPath”"”
& $wdpath “/path:$rpath” “/port:$Port” “/vpath:$VPath”
}
Set-Alias webdev Start-WebDevServer
Cheers!
@C-J, I really like how you added the function to find the exe rather than hard coding it.
> $ignore = [System.Diagnostics.Process]::Start(…)
There are three canonical PSH ways to ignore the result of an expression:
- Assign to $null
- Redirect to $null (…. > $null)
- Cast to [void]