Using a wwwroot folder (ASP.NET Core style) in ASP.NET 4.5 project

Question

I quite like the approach of the new asp.net (asp.net 5\core 1.0) web apps with the wwwroot folder being the root and only static files in there being served up.

Is possible through routing or other configuration to have a wwwroot folder in an asp.net 4.5 project behave in a similar way, such that static files are only served out of it, and it's the "root" of the webapp for static files?

(Part of my motivation in asking this is that I have an angular app hosted in an asp.net 5 project in VS2015, but I need to move this into an asp.net 4.5 project, but would like to keep the existing structure on disk)

Attempt using OWIN

I've attempted this using an empty ASP.NET 4.5 web app project and OWIN. So my folder structure has my angular app, with a main index.html file in a wwwroot folder in the project folder. There are no HTML files in the root of the project.

I've added OWIN through nuget and the following startup file:

[assembly: OwinStartup(typeof(MyApp.UI.Startup))]
namespace MyApp.UI
{
    public class Startup
    {
        public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
        {
            string root = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;
            var physicalFileSystem = new PhysicalFileSystem(Path.Combine(root, "wwwroot"));
            var options = new FileServerOptions
            {
                EnableDefaultFiles = true,
                FileSystem = physicalFileSystem
            };
            options.StaticFileOptions.FileSystem = physicalFileSystem;
            options.StaticFileOptions.ServeUnknownFileTypes = false;
            options.DefaultFilesOptions.DefaultFileNames = new[] {"index.html"};
            app.UseFileServer(options);
        }
    }
}

This fails though - the source of my index.html file does load when I run this, but all the css, js, etc files that it references fail with a 404. Even worse, if I append gulpfile.js onto the root url it loads my gulp file from the root of the project folder. This is precisely the sort of thing I'm trying to avoid.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I believe I have a working method for doing this now. Took a bit of googling and experimentation, but in the end I came up with the following process:

1. Create a new ASP.NET 4.5 project in VS2015, selecting the Empty Template

2. Add OWIN references through nuget (Install-Package Microsoft.Owin.Host.SystemWeb and Microsoft.Owin.StaticFiles)

3. Add a startup file similar to this:

   [assembly: OwinStartup(typeof(MyApp.Startup))]
   namespace MyApp.UI
   {
       public class Startup
       {
           public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
           {
               string root = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;
               var physicalFileSystem = new PhysicalFileSystem(Path.Combine(root, "wwwroot"));
               var options = new FileServerOptions
               {
                   RequestPath = PathString.Empty,
                   EnableDefaultFiles = true,
                   FileSystem = physicalFileSystem
               };
               options.StaticFileOptions.FileSystem = physicalFileSystem;
               options.StaticFileOptions.ServeUnknownFileTypes = false;
               app.UseFileServer(options);
           }
       }
   }
   

4. Add the following to your web.config file, to prevent IIS from serving static files you don't want it to, and force everything through the OWIN pipeline:

   <system.webServer>
       <handlers>
         <remove name="StaticFile"/>
         <add name="Owin" verb="" path="*" type="Microsoft.Owin.Host.SystemWeb.OwinHttpHandler, Microsoft.Owin.Host.SystemWeb"/>
       </handlers>
     </system.webServer>
   

I'm always open to better suggestions on how to do this, but this at least seems to work for me.