ASP.NET 2.0: A Developeramp;#039;s Notebook [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

6.3. Precompile Your Site

In ASP.NET 1.x, you deploy
files with
.aspx extensions to the web server that hosts
the application. To safeguard your business logic, ASP.NET does not
require you to deploy the code-behinds of your Web Forms. However,
the user interface of your web application is still encapsulated
within the .aspx file, and these files must be
deployed to the web server, opening the possibility that someone at
the web server end (especially for web hosting scenarios) may read
your UI code. ASP.NET 2.0 has gone a step further, allowing you to
precompile a site so that when you deploy it:

Note: You can now precompile and deploy your ASP.NET web
application without exposing the source, thereby improving first user
response time and protecting your IP.

There is no code (neither .aspx nor code-behind
sources) on the server side.

The site is precompiled, which shortens first-use response time.

Tip: If your web application uses client-side scripts, they would still be
visible on the user's web browser side, since they
have to be sent to the web browser for processing.

6.3.1. How do I do that?

ASP.NET 2.0 supports two precompilation options:

Precompile for site deployment

Precompile In-Place

Precompile for site deployment
allows to you to deploy the
compiled binaries of your web site to the hosting machine without the
need to deploy your source code. This is a great boost to protecting
your source, especially when you are deploying to a remote hosting
machine and do not want others to see the source code behind your web
site. It also precompiles the site and so reduces the first-use
response time of the application.

Let's see how you can precompile a site for
deployment.

Launch Visual Studio 2005 and create a new web site project. Name the
project C:\ASPNET20\chap06-Precompile.

To precompile the web site, use the
aspnet_compiler utility available in the
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\<version>
folder.

In the command-line window, type the following:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\version >aspnet_compiler -v /Precompile -p C:\ASPNET20\chap06-Precompile c:\Precompile_Target 

The aspnet_compiler Utility

The syntax of the aspnet_compiler utility is:

aspnet_compiler [-?] [-m metabasePath | -v virtualPath [-p physicalDir]] [[-u] targetDir]

-m

The full IIS metabase path of the application. This switch cannot be
combined with the -v or -p switches.

-v

The virtual path of the application to be compiled (e.g.,
"/MyApp"). If -p
is specified, the physical path is used to locate the application.
Otherwise, the IIS metabase is used, and the application is assumed
to be in the default site (under
"/LM/W3SVC/1/Root"). This switch
cannot be combined with the -m switch.

-p

The physical path of the application to be compiled. If
-p is missing, the IIS metabase is used to locate
the app. This switch must be combined with -v.

-u

If specified, the precompiled application is updatable.

-f

Overwrites the target directory if it already exists. Existing
contents are lost.

-nologo

Suppresses the compiler copyright message.

The physical path to which the application is compiled. If not
specified, the application is precompiled in-place.

Your compiled web site can now be found in
C:\Precompile_Target (see Figure 6-11).

Figure 6-11. The folder containing the compiled page

If you view the content of the placeholder
Default.aspx file, you will see that it contains
the following single sentence (all the logic is compiled into files
located in the bin folder):

This is a marker file generated by the precompilation tool, and should not be deleted!

To deploy the application to the target web server, you can now
create a virtual directory in IIS and point it to the
C:\Precompile_Target directory. To access the
web site, simply use the following URL format:
http://webserver/virtualdir/default.aspx.

6.3.2. What about...

...precompiling in-place?

That's certainly possible. Precompile In-Place
allows you to precompile a web site before the user
loads
the page. Traditional ASP.NET pages are dynamically compiled and
cached the first time a user loads the page, so the load time is
always higher the first time the site is accessed. With
precompilation, the web site is compiled and cached before a user
loads a page for the first time, eliminating the long wait for the
page to be compiled. Another benefit to this approach is the ability
to check for bugs before the user discovers them.

Note: Precompile In-Place is useful for web sites that change
often.

To precompile your site before the first user loads it, you simply
invoke the special
handler
precompile.axd located in the virtual root of
your web application, like this:

http://localhost/chap06-Precompile/precompile.axd

After precompilation, you will notice that there are no delays when
the application is first accessed.

Tip: Precompiling works by compiling the entire site (including
subdirectories).

...hackers launching a denial-of-service attack
at my site by forcing it to constantly precompile?

ASP.NET 2.0 will turn off remote precompiling in-place. You can only
perform a precompile in-place locally.

...updating an application once I have
precompiled it?

Once you have precompiled an application, you can only deploy the
directory that has been generated. To update an application, you
would need to modify the original application files and perform the
precompilation steps again.

6.3.3. Where can I learn more?

To learn how you can precompile ASP.NET 1.x applications, check out
the article at http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/PreCompileAspx.asp.