We have a company product (asp.net website) that gets compiled and distributed to our clients. I need to figure out a way to allow us to add in an ad hoc aspx webpage into the website (so it recognizes the master page, the forms authentication, assemblies, etc) without having to provide them with an un-compiled version of the website product.
Is this possible. Is there a better method than having a special compiled version of the website on their server.
More detailed information: The main product website is a Web Application in IIS7 and the custom ad hoc page is in a total separate folder on the server that gets added in as a virtual directory to the main product’s website application. This works fine when using an un-compiled version of the web application.
With the way you have framed it, you are likely “hosed”. But there is a workaround that might work for you. That would be to pull as much logic into libraries. This does not completely obfuscate the flow, but it does keep your code hidden from the client.
You can take this farther, if you wish. Using a custom extension, like .mspx (Microsoft did this), you can completely encapsulate the code. I would imagine you could add some type of build step that took your compiled application and worked the magic of the custom extension in. You then allow ASPX to be handled “normally”. You would have to POC this idea, of course.
There might be a way, via config, to have the foldered page work, but I have not polayed in this direction. Would be worth an POC experiment.