Embedded Web Server in .NET

Question

I would like to embed a light weight web server in a Windows application developed in .NET. The web server has to support PHP.

I have looked at Cassini, but it seems

Answer 1

You can always use PHP as a CGI application. CGI is well documented, and AFAIK pretty easy to implement. Use Darrel Millers suggestion, and couple it with some CGI magick, and you should be cooking with gas.

Answer 2

I would look at the likes of XAMPP Lite which you could easily start up and shutdown with your application.

There is also AppWeb which claims to be exactly what you are looking for.

Answer 3

Mongoose embedded webserver https://code.google.com/p/mongoose/

You can build it with VS2012/10/08 as EXE and you can use PHP and also websockets to push data to the client app. Also you can build a DLL you can do this with make or bring the code into a VS DLL project and build out a _DLLMain, DEF file, etc. Then use it direct from C# - see the mongoose.cs and example.cs files.

Answer 4

The .net class HttpListener exposes the underlying http.sys upon which IIS is built. All machines since Windows XP2 have http.sys installed by default. Here are some links to get you started.

XML-RPC SERVER USING HTTPLISTENER

HttpListener For Dummies

As for the PHP support, I don't know how you would enable this, but there is no technical reason you couldn't build it in.