ASP.Net Web Service help please

[Top Poster]

I was wondering if someone could help me out with some of the "big picture"
issues associated with ASP.Net Web services from Windows XP. Any advice will
be greatly appreciated!


Why, when I create a new ASP.Net web application project, does Visual
Studio.Net prompt me for the URL of the web server? At this point
- I might not have configured a web server, or
- I might not have access to the web server (ie I might be
developing the web service "offline")




If I am developing the web service offline, is there a need to do *anything*
with IIS on the local machine? (In my case IIS is already installed and
running on the server to which I will eventually deploy the application). Or
should I use IIS on the development machine to create a "dummy" IP address
so that I can specify a valid address at project creation time.




Can I change the URL specified at the project creation time to something
else at any time?





Why is it that when you create an IIS Virtual Directory, it prompts you for
the location of the content directory? Is this meant to be something like a
"bin" directory?





Is it bad practise to create an ASP.Net project inside an IIS virtual
directory? (eg C:\inetpub\wwwroot\MyWebService).





When you create an ASP.Net web project, does it have to have the same name
as the XML web service being created? eg The server contains virtual
directories myService1, myService2, myService3. Should I create 3 separate
ASP.Net projects, named myService1, myService2 and myService3 or
(preferably) can I instead create an ASP.Net project named myServices, with
deployment projects named myService1, myService2 and myService3? The reason
I don't want to create a separate project for each web service is that the
code for all 3 webservices will almost always be identical and I don't want
to be forever copying and pasting code from one ASP.Net project to another.






Thanks and regards,

DJ

 

[Robbe Morris [C# MVP]]

It is asking you for the local url. Essentially, VS.NET wants all of your
ASP.NET projects to run under virtual directories while you develop.
It does a bunch of stuff with moving files around in your cache to
make debugging much more friendly. Vs.NET pretty much trys
to insist on properly setting up a web site for you locally prior
to letting you develop.

I think most developers use c:\inetpub\wwwroot as the root in
IIS. When you create a new ASp.NEt app, it would reference
http://localhost as the root as c:\inetpub\wwwroot and create a
virtual directory for you named the same as what you entered when
prompted.

I'm not thrilled about these types of restrictions either but that is
how it works.

--
2004 and 2005 Microsoft MVP C#
Robbe Morris
http://www.robbemorris.com
http://www.masterado.net