How to Interact from Web Application to Client Machines

Question

I have a web application on ASP.NET MVC which is an intranet project. I would like to add some features to it to make it easier to work with Backup’s.

I already have one WIDNOWSFORMS APPLICATION that performs the backups with user interaction and saves them on a server on the network. And also the same application only in the form of WINDOWS SERVICE that automatically backups at a certain time and also saves them to a server on the network.

Each of the applications serves in a scenario, but what I want is: Integrate the Application ASP.NET MVC for when, for example, I want to backup drivers of a particular machine of a user, I select this option in the WEB Application, it sends the message (Somehow to the machine, I think it can communicate with the service) and the machine does the Backup and saved on the server.

How can I do this, through WEB API, some other way ?

Answer 1

From what I understand you want to "automate" some processes that already exist and that today require a human interaction to be realized or simply YOU, and not the user, indicate when to do.

As this should come from the web application and received by the desktop application, I believe that creating a windows service "Windows Service", in c#, in the client solve your problem.

In the web application you inform what should be done (save this in a database table) and the application "Windows Service", in the client, from time to time checks and processes this(s) information().

• For security, create a "Web Service" to read this "table" (do not leave database connection information in the client).

• Use a token to validate Web Service access

• Put a time interval that meets your needs, that does not cause unnecessary connections in the database and processing overload in the customer’s machine.

• Bring at once a list of the "actions" to be performed on the client, thus avoiding multiple access to the database.

Tip to run the application in a time interval:

do
{
    ProcessaAcoes();
    Thread.Sleep(1000 * 60 * 60 * 2); //de 2 em 2 horas
} while (true);