Silverlight App Deployment

Gareth posted on Monday, September 21, 2009

Hi All, I'm trying to re-deploy my SL3 application again to our production web server. I've tried to do this once before but failed. Are there any specific instructions on how to take a working development environment structure and make work in a production environment?

For example, I am trying to deploy SL Demo004. Do I just need to create 2 websites/VMs on IIS for this? One for 'Demo.Web' and one for 'Demo' ? Which files do I need in each project?

Thanks,
Gareth.

sergeyb replied on Monday, September 21, 2009

There is not much you have to do. Mostly, you just need to update .ClientConfig inside your XAP file to point to correct server. If your SL app and your host are inside the same web application / site, then there is not much else to do.

Sergey Barskiy
Principal Consultant
office: 678.405.0687 | mobile: 404.388.1899

Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year | Custom Development Solutions, Technical Innovation

-----Original Message-----
From: Gareth [mailto:cslanet@lhotka.net]
Sent: Monday, September 21, 2009 8:07 AM
To: Sergey Barskiy
Subject: [CSLA .NET] Silverlight App Deployment

Hi All, I'm trying to re-deploy my SL3 application again to our production web server. I've tried to do this once before but failed. Are there any specific instructions on how to take a working development environment structure and make work in a production environment?

Thanks,
Gareth.

Gareth replied on Monday, September 21, 2009

Ok, so I only need one web site then, not two? Just dump everything out of Demo.Web/bin and Demo.Web/ClientBin into the virtual machine directory, making sure I update the ServiceReferences.ClientConfig and recompile the .xap file beforehand.

I am having to do this manually as I can't 'publish' to the production server.

sergeyb replied on Monday, September 21, 2009

You do not need to recompile XAP file. XAP file is just a standard ZIP file. You can change extension on it, unzip the content, edit config file, then zip it all back up. Just make sure you do not re-zip using folder names.

Sergey Barskiy
Principal Consultant
office: 678.405.0687 | mobile: 404.388.1899

Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year | Custom Development Solutions, Technical Innovation


-----Original Message-----
From: Gareth [mailto:cslanet@lhotka.net]
Sent: Monday, September 21, 2009 11:18 AM
To: Sergey Barskiy
Subject: Re: [CSLA .NET] RE: Silverlight App Deployment

Ok, so I only need one web site then, not two? Just dump everything out of Demo.Web/bin and Demo.Web/ClientBin into the virtual machine directory, making sure I update the ServiceReferences.ClientConfig and recompile the .xap file beforehand.

RockfordLhotka replied on Monday, September 21, 2009

Try publishing to a local folder then. The resulting folder structure will contain everything you need on the server - you can then zip and ftp it up there or whatever.

Gareth replied on Monday, September 21, 2009

Aha, finally cracked it. Thanks for that tip Rocky, and thanks for your help too Sergey.

Ok, this is all slowly starting to make sense. For final production release we are going to move to having a separate application server too. I need to set-up my project as per Demo005 in that case. Is that correct?

Many thanks,
Gareth.

RockfordLhotka:

Try publishing to a local folder then. The resulting folder structure will contain everything you need on the server - you can then zip and ftp it up there or whatever.

RockfordLhotka replied on Monday, September 21, 2009

Yes, Demo005 is the one.

(from the CSLA .NET for Silverlight video series at http://store.lhotka.net
- sorry for the shameless plug :) )

That demo shows how to set up a separate app server to host the data portal,
thus allowing you to run the data portal and related business code on a
different server from the web server that is providing your UI, or at least
your XAP files.

RockfordLhotka replied on Monday, September 21, 2009

Typically you just have one web project in your solution, and all you need to do is publish that web project to the web server - the publish process should put all the right files in the right places.

The only time you'd have a second web project is if you have a web site for the UI (including deployment of the Silverlight XAP file), and a separate web site to host your WCF services (data portal host or other services).