Question

We have a 3rd Party Piece of software that I’m wanting to apply some automation to through a COM Object that they make available. I’ve been using a Windows Forms App so far, but would really like to start working on an intranet site for the company which is something that they are lacking at the moment.

So is this something that is possible? Are you able to access a COM Object through an ASP.NET Application (MVC3 or 4) in an intranet situation?

I’ve looked at simply having the server control the application through the software that is installed ON the server, but the application uses our Active Directory to control access and they don’t provide a good way to pass the credentials around so unless I’m missing something I would need to have a user that has all the access that anyone would need and then enforce the restrictions through code which is enough of a reason that I will continue with a Windows Forms App instead of an intranet app.

EDIT: Accessing the COM Object from javascript is also an option if this is possible somehow.

Answer 1

I use the following javascript code to start an instance of Excel on the client machine.
It will only work with Internet Explorer. Perhaps you could do the same with
your object.

var excelApp, excelFile;
  function initExcel(filename)
  {
    excelApp = new ActiveXObject("Excel.Application");
    excelFile = excelApp.Workbooks.Open(filename);
  }