AWS AppStream How do I test Session Context with SessionContextRetriever.exe

Question

I'm using AWS AppStream to stream a legacy .NET client. The app requires a parameter to start up correctly, which it gets via SessionContext passed into the create_streaming_url API call. I'd like to test this interaction locally without having to redeploy my app for every debug iteration as that takes well over half an hour. According to the AWS AppStream Docs session-context is stored in an environment variable that is only accessible via the AWS provided SessionContextRetriever.exe .NET application. The docs list the environment var as AppStream_Session_Context. I've tried setting this env var and running SessionContextRetriever.exe with no success. There is no documentation that I can find for SessionContextRetriever.exe but there's obviously something I'm missing here. Anybody have any experience with AppStream and session context?

Answer 1

The executable they provide doesn't come with a license, so I have to presume that it's copyrighted and licensed restrictively etc. So de-compiling it would be not be a good idea. But if somebody were to do such a thing, I would expect them to find something like

Console.Write(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("APPSTREAM_SESSION_CONTEXT", EnvironmentVariableTarget.Machine));

So I suggest that you try setting the environment variable at the system level for testing. That is, setting it in a script won't be visible to this executable because it's not looking at your current terminal session.

Setting the environment variable at the system level (using the Windows "Edit system environment variables) I see the output from this executable.

Answer 2

Run PS as Administrator:

PS C:\Users\Public\Apps> setx -m AppStream_Session_Context "Value"
PS C:\Users\Public\Apps> .\SessionContextRetriever.exe
Value