Question

Like the title says, If I place an app_offline.htm in the application root, will it cut off currently running requests, or just new ones?

Answer 1

Here is my lame experiment; I created an ASPX page with the following code:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {     Response.BufferOutput = false;     Response.Write('Step 1<br />');     System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(10000);     Response.Write('Step 2<br />');     System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(10000);     Response.Write('Step 3<br />'); } 

This code simply introduces some loooong page loads. I accessed the page and while it was loading, I created an ‘app_offline.htm’ file. I then loaded another web browser and confirmed the application was offline. I then re-visited my ‘loading’ request…it completed all the way to step 3.

This confirms that current requests finish loading and new requests are turned away.