One of
the nice enhancements in IIS 7 (and now 8) is
the ability to be able to intercept non-managed - ie. non ASP.NET served - requests from within ASP.NET managed modules. This opened up a ton of new functionality that could be applied across non-managed content using .NET code. I thought I had a pretty good handle on how IIS 7's Integrated mode pipeline works, but when I put together some samples last tonight I realized that
the way that managed and unmanaged requests
fire into
the pipeline is downright confusing especially when it comes to
the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests attribute. There are a number of settings that can affect whether a managed module receives non-ASP.NET content requests such as static files or requests from other frameworks like PHP or ASP classic, and this is topic of this blog post. Native and Managed Modules
The integrated mode IIS pipeline for IIS 7 and later - as
the name suggests - allows for integration of ASP.NET pipeline events in
the IIS request pipeline. Natively IIS runs unmanaged code and there are a host of native mode modules that handle
the core behavior of IIS. If you set up a new IIS site or application without managed code support only
the native modules are supported and fired without any interaction between native and managed code. If you use
the Integrated pipeline with managed code enabled however things get a little more confusing as there both native modules and .NET managed modules can
fire against
the same IIS request. If you open up
the IIS Modules dialog you see both managed and unmanaged modules. Unmanaged modules point at physical files on disk, while unmanaged modules point at .NET types and files referenced from
the GAC or
the current project's BIN folder. Both native and managed modules can co-exist and execute side by side and on
the same request. When running in IIS 7
the IIS pipeline actually instantiates a
the ASP.NET runtime (via
the System.Web.PipelineRuntime class) which unlike
the core HttpRuntime classes in ASP.NET receives notification callbacks when IIS integrated mode events
fire.
The IIS pipeline is smart enough to detect whether managed handlers are attached and if they're none these notifications don't
fire, improving performance.
The good news about all of this for .NET devs is that ASP.NET style modules can be used for just about every kind of IIS request. All you need to do is create a new Web Application and enable ASP.NET on it, and then attach managed handlers. Handlers can look at ASP.NET content (ie. ASPX pages, MVC, WebAPI etc. requests) as well as non-ASP.NET content including static content like HTML files, images, javascript and css resources etc. It's very cool that this capability has been surfaced. However, with that functionality comes a lot of responsibility. Because every request passes through
the ASP.NET pipeline if managed modules (or handlers) are attached there are possible performance implications that come with it. Running through
the ASP.NET pipeline does add some overhead. ASP.NET and Your Own Modules When you create a new ASP.NET project typically
the Visual Studio templates create
the modules section like this: <system.webServer>
<validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" />
<modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" >
</modules> </system.webServer>
Specifically
the interesting thing about this is
the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequest="true" flag, which seems to indicate that it controls whether any registered modules always run, even when
the value is set to false. Realistically though this flag does not control whether managed code is fired for all requests or not. Rather it is an override for
the preCondition flag on a particular handler.
With
the flag set to
the default true setting, you can assume that pretty much every IIS request you receive ends up firing through your ASP.NET module pipeline and every module you have configured is accessed even by non-managed requests like static files. In other words, your module will have to handle all requests. Now so far so obvious.
What's not quite so obvious is what happens when you set
the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequest="false". You probably would expect that immediately
the non-ASP.NET requests no longer get funnelled through
the ASP.NET Module pipeline. But that's not what actually happens.
For example, if I create a module like this:<add name="SharewareModule" type="HowAspNetWorks.SharewareMessageModule" />
by default it will
fire against ALL requests regardless of
the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests flag. Even if
the value runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="false",
the module is fired. Not quite expected.
So what is
the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests really good for? It's essentially an override for managedHandler preCondition. If I declare my handler in web.config like this:<add name="SharewareModule" type="HowAspNetWorks.SharewareMessageModule" preCondition="managedHandler" />
and
the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="false" my module only fires against managed requests. If I switch
the flag to true, now my module ends up handling all IIS requests that are passed through from IIS.
The moral of
the story here is that if you intend to only look at ASP.NET content, you should always set
the preCondition="managedHandler" attribute to ensure that only managed requests are fired on this module. But even if you do this, realize that runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" can override this setting.
runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests and Http Application Events
Another place
the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequest attribute affects is
the Global Http Application object (typically in global.asax) and
the Application_XXXX events that you can hook up there. So while
the events there are dynamically hooked up to
the application class, they basically behave as if they were set with
the preCodition="managedHandler" configuration switch.
The end result is that if you have runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" you'll see every Http request passed through
the Application_XXXX events, and you only see ASP.NET requests with
the flag set to "false".
What's all that mean?
Configuring an application to handle requests for both ASP.NET and other content requests can be tricky especially if you need to mix modules that might require both.
Couple of things are important to remember. If your module doesn't need to look at every request, by all means set a preCondition="managedHandler" on it. This will at least allow it to respond to
the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="false" flag and then only process ASP.NET requests.
Look really carefully to see whether you actually need runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" in your applications as set by
the default new project templates in Visual Studio. Part of
the reason, this is
the default because it was required for
the initial versions of IIS 7 and ASP.NET 2 in order to handle MVC extensionless URLs.
However, if you are running IIS 7 or later and .NET 4.0 you can use
the ExtensionlessUrlHandler instead to allow you MVC functionality without requiring runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true": <handlers>
<remove name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" />
<add name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" path="*." verb="GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG,PUT,DELETE,PATCH,OPTIONS" type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler" preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv4.0" />
</handlers>
Oddly this is
the default for Visual Studio 2012 MVC template apps, so I'm not sure why
the default template still adds runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" is - it should be enabled only if there's a specific need to access non ASP.NET requests.
As a side note, it's interesting that when you access a static HTML resource, you can actually write into
the Response object and get
the output to show, which is trippy. I haven't looked closely to see how this works - whether ASP.NET just fires directly into
the native output stream or whether
the static requests are re-routed directly through
the ASP.NET pipeline once a managed code module is detected. This doesn't work for all non ASP.NET resources - for example, I can't do
the same with ASP classic requests, but it makes for an interesting demo when injecting HTML content into a static HTML page :-)
Note that on
the original Windows Server 2008 and Vista (IIS 7.0) you might need a HotFix in order for ExtensionLessUrlHandler to work properly for MVC projects. On my live server I needed it (about 6 months ago), but others have observed that
the latest service updates have integrated this functionality and
the hotfix is not required. On IIS 7.5 and later I've not needed any patches for things to just work.
Plan for non-ASP.NET Requests
It's important to remember that if you write a .NET Module to run on IIS 7, there's no way for you to prevent non-ASP.NET requests from hitting your module. So make sure you plan to support requests to extensionless URLs, to static resources like files. Luckily ASP.NET creates a full Request and full Response object for you for non ASP.NET content. So even for static files and even for ASP classic for example, you can look at Request.FilePath or Request.ContentType (in post handler pipeline events) to determine what content you are dealing with.
As always with Module design make sure you check for
the conditions in your code that make
the module applicable and if a filter fails immediately exit - minimize
the code that runs if your module doesn't need to process
the request.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in IIS7 ASP.NET
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