RSS feeds is everywhere, and rightly so. Just about any modern browser, e-mail client, search engine or mobile phone is compliant with the RSS technology, and it gives web developers an easy and very convenient way to share and consume content across the web. From time to time I need to show a list of recent items form an RSS feed. This is a very easy thing to do, and I always end up copying the same usercontrol around, which becomes nothing but a mess! Eventually I need to change a few things, which means I get different versions of the same control spread throughout my projects.

This mess has got to stop, and from now on I'll put all my common controls in a class library project, which I can reference from all the other projects.

Back to my RSS feed reader - this is the first control I've made into a server control, from one of my many usercontrols around the projects folder. The control downloads the XML at the Url of the RSS feed, and renders a list of links. The controls contains a few properties:

• FeedUrl: The Url of the RSS feed to download
• NumberOfItems: The number of items which should be rendered. Defaults to 5 if none is specified.
• CssClass (Part of the WebControl class, from which FeedList derives): Use this so you have style the control from CSS.

The code

It really is straight forward. Below is the method that renders the links.

private void RenderFeedItems(HtmlTextWriter writer)
{
  if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(FeedUrl))
  {
    XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
    doc.Load(FeedUrl);

    XmlNodeList items = doc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("channel/item");

    if (items != null)
    {
      int bounce = NumberOfItems;
      if (items.Count < NumberOfItems)
        bounce = items.Count;

      for (int i = 0; i < bounce; i++)
      {
        XmlNode titleNode = items[i].SelectSingleNode("title");
        XmlNode urlNode = items[i].SelectSingleNode("link");
        XmlNode pubDateNode = items[i].SelectSingleNode("pubDate");

        string title = String.Empty;
        string url = String.Empty;
        DateTime pubDate = new DateTime();

        if (titleNode != null)
          title = titleNode.InnerText;

        if (urlNode != null)
          url = urlNode.InnerText;

        if (pubDateNode != null)
          DateTime.TryParse(pubDateNode.InnerText, out pubDate);

        writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Li);

        writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Href, url);
        writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Title, title);
        writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.A);
        writer.Write(title);
        writer.RenderEndTag();

        writer.RenderEndTag();
      }
    }
    else
    {
      RenderErrorMessage(writer, String.Format("No RSS-feed items found at: {0}", FeedUrl));
    }
  }
  else
  {
    throw new Exception("FeedUrl cannot be empty!");
  }
}

To use the control, put it in your website's App_Code folder, and add the following to the <controls> collection of your <pages> section in web.config:

<add tagPrefix="dnknormark" namespace="dnknormark" />

This should make your <pages> section look like this one:

<pages>
  <controls>
    <add tagPrefix="dnknormark" namespace="dnknormark" />
  </controls>
</pages>

<dnknormark:FeedList ID="lstFeeds" runat="server" CssClass="feedList" 
NumberOfItems="5" FeedUrl="http://www.dnknormark.net/syndication.axd" />

Use it as you'd like. Feel free to change it, the way you need.

Some time ago, I blogged about Adding an Application Pool to IIS7 programmatically. The result was a new Application Pool, that uses the Integrated Pipeline in IIS7.

In this post I will show you how to add a new Website, that uses the Application Pool from the other blog post.

I've loaded the Console Application I used to add the Application Pool, and moved the logic from Main to a method called AddApplicationPool, to split it up nicely. It is actually even easier to add a website programmatically. Below is the code for doing just that:

private static void AddWebSite()
{
  ServerManager mgr = new ServerManager();

  if (!Directory.Exists(@"c:\inetpub\wwwroot\iis7test"))
  {
    Directory.CreateDirectory(@"c:\inetpub\wwwroot\iis7test");
  }

  // Add a new Site to the server, configured to use our the iis7test home directory.
  Site site = mgr.Sites.Add("MyWebSite", @"c:\inetpub\wwwroot\iis7test", 80);
  
  // Set the application pool name of the site, to use the MyAppPool application pool.
  site.ApplicationDefaults.ApplicationPoolName = "MyAppPool";

  // Clear all bindings.
  site.Bindings.Clear();

  // Make the site listen to incoming HTTP requests using host header iis7test, on port 80.
  site.Bindings.Add("*:80:iis7test", "http");
  
  // Set auto start to true.
  site.ServerAutoStart = true;

  // Commit the changes
  mgr.CommitChanges();
}

Notice how we add Bindings to the website. Bindings is the information that tells IIS7 when to serve our website. We use this string to configure bindings: *:80:iis7test. The first * tells IIS to listen on all IP addresses on your system. 80 is the port number, and iis7test is the host header value for this site.

To browse our website, we need to add iis7test to the computers hosts file (located in %WINDIR%\System32\Drivers\etc), and point it to 127.0.0.1.

Internet Information Services 7 (IIS7) has a great new set of features regarding configuration. Using the Integrated Configuration system, you can configure your server from XML files, the IIS7 manager, the command prompt using the APPCMD tool, but IIS7 also lets you manage your server from managed code in a very intuitive manner.

If you navigate to the %WINDIR%\System32\InetSrv folder in Windows Vista, you'll find all the executables, DLL's and XML (.config) configuration files you need. It doesn't matter if you use the IIS7 Manager, managed code or the APPCMD command-line based tool to manage your server - at the end of the day you are changing an XML file. That is applicationHost.config which is located here: C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config.

The integrated configuration system on IIS7 is great news for hosters, and web developers. Hosters can easily automate server management through managed code, and as a web developer, you can configure your server from your web.config file, which makes it easy to move your web application from development, to test, and further up towards production. Read my post on how to set a websites default document, from within the web application's web.config file.

In this post, I will create an application pool on my local IIS7.

Launch Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 - whatever you've got will work.

Create a new Console Application, and give it a name of your own choice.

Right click References in the Solution Explorer and add a new reference.

Locate Microsoft.Web.Administration.dll from the C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv folder.

To access IIS7, we use the ServerManager class, as shown below.

   1:  using System;

   2:  using System.Collections.Generic;

   3:  using System.Linq;

   4:  using System.Text;

   5:  using Microsoft.Web.Administration;

   6:   

   7:  namespace Iis7ManagementTest

   8:  {

   9:    class Program

  10:    {

  11:      static void Main(string[] args)

  12:      {

  13:        ServerManager mgr = new ServerManager();

  14:   

  15:        // Add a new application pool called MyAppPool

  16:        ApplicationPool myAppPool = mgr.ApplicationPools.Add("MyAppPool");

  17:        

  18:        // Configure my new app pool to start automatically.

  19:        myAppPool.AutoStart = true;

  20:   

  21:        // What action should IIS take when my app pool exceeds 

  22:        // the CPU limit specified by the Limit property

  23:        myAppPool.Cpu.Action = ProcessorAction.KillW3wp;

  24:   

  25:        // Use the Integrated Pipeline mode

  26:        myAppPool.ManagedPipelineMode = ManagedPipelineMode.Integrated;

  27:   

  28:        // Set the runtime version of ASP.NET to 2.0

  29:        myAppPool.ManagedRuntimeVersion = "V2.0";

  30:   

  31:        // Use the Network Service account

  32:        myAppPool.ProcessModel.IdentityType = ProcessModelIdentityType.NetworkService;

  33:        

  34:        // Shut down after being idle for 5 minutes.

  35:        myAppPool.ProcessModel.IdleTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(5);

  36:   

  37:        // Max. number of IIS worker processes (W3WP.EXE)

  38:        myAppPool.ProcessModel.MaxProcesses = 1;

  39:   

  40:        // Commit the changes

  41:        mgr.CommitChanges();

  42:      }

  43:    }

  44:  }

After the application has been executed, we will see our new application pool inside the IIS7 Manager:

That's all for now. In another blog post I will show how to add a new web site, that will use our new application pool - also from managed code.