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Thursday, March 20, 2008

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WebDev.WebServer PowerShell Function

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\DevServer\9.0\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\DevServer\9.0\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.

Posted By Harry Pierson at 2:39 PM Pacific Standard Time

Comments [4]

ASP.NET | Development | PowerShell

Thursday, March 20, 2008 5:01:40 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Pretty cool Harry. There's actually an easier way of running it, something like this would work just fine:

&'C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\DevServer\9.0\WebDev.WebServer.EXE' "/path:$rpath" "/port:$port" "/vpath:$vpath"

Tomas Restrepo

Friday, March 21, 2008 2:28:02 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

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 Shared\DevServer\9.0'),
('CommonProgramFiles', 'Microsoft Shared\DevServer\9.0'),
('SystemRoot', 'Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727')

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 Berg

Monday, March 24, 2008 10:19:05 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

@C-J, I really like how you added the function to find the exe rather than hard coding it.

DevHawk

Wednesday, March 26, 2008 6:57:11 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

> $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]

Richard

Comments are closed.