IIS site and nant/nantcontrib?

Question

is it possible to manage IIS web applications with NAnt? For example stop or start it?

Answer 1

Maybe you can use exec task to execute

iisreset -stop
iisreset -start

EDIT : And this VBS might help for stopping/starting WebApplications under IIS

Here is the accespted solution to stop a website with nant task on IIS :

<target name="stopSite"> 
  <exec program="cscript.exe"> 
    <arg value="C:\windows\system32\iisweb.vbs" /> 
    <arg value="/stop" /> 
    <arg value="test" /> 
  </exec> 
</target>

Answer 2

Nant has the servicecontroller task with which you can either stop/start just the Web server or entire IIS, i use it generally to just stop/start the web server.

<servicecontroller action="Stop" service="w3svc" 
   timeout="10000" verbose="true" />

Documentation available at http://nant.sourceforge.net/release/latest/help/tasks/servicecontroller.html

Answer 3

If you like using Powershell either on its own or calling a powershell script through Nant this is a breeze.

IIS:\>Stop-WebAppPool -Name "DefaultAppPool"
IIS:\>Start-WebAppPool -Name "DefaultAppPool"

You can download the snap-in here http://www.iis.net/download/PowerShell

Some Notes on its use: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee790599.aspx

You can also start/stop individual websites.