Nice ASP.NET 2.0 Feature - App Offline

Just found this over on ScottGu’s blog – the App Offline feature:

Basically, if you place a file with this name [ed: app_offline.htm] in the root of a web application directory, ASP.NET 2.0 will shut-down the application, unload the application domain from the server, and stop processing any new incoming requests for that application.  ASP.NET will also then respond to all requests for dynamic pages in the application by sending back the content of the app_offline.htm file (for example: you might want to have a “site under construction” or “down for maintenance” message).

 

This provides a convenient way to take down your application while you are making big changes or copying in lots of new page functionality (and you want to avoid the annoying problem of people hitting and activating your site in the middle of a content update).  It can also be a useful way to immediately unlock and unload a SQL Express or Access database whose .mdf or .mdb data files are residing in the /app_data directory.

 

Once you remove the app_offline.htm file, the next request into the application will cause ASP.NET to load the application and app-domain again, and life will continue along as normal.

 

This is a really nice feature – very useful for putting revisions of a site live.  This way you can diable the site temporarily and simply trust the ASP.NET engine to “do the right thing”.  Deleting (or renaming) the file once you are finished results in ASP.NET beginning to serve your site again.

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