Having problems using IIS Express SSL with VS2012 and a Team

Question

The Problem:

ADFS2 requires that a RP Trust uses https. The RP trust being https://localhost:44310/PAWS/. With that said, I need to have IIS Express use SSL locally. So, when I configure my ASP.NET MVC4 project to use IIS Express. mvc4 project configuration

When I check this in to TFS (source control) and another developer on the team gets latest. The project will not load for them.

MVC4 project wont load

Visual Studio 2012 will display the following error messages when opening the solution: VS2012 error 1 VS2012 error 2

This is because IIS Express wont automatically read the project file and add the HTTPS binding to the site configuration. This is the configuration that VS adds to IIS Express' applicationhost.config file

<site name="PAWS.Web-Site" id="2">
    <application path="/" applicationPool="Clr4IntegratedAppPool">
        <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="C:\Users\larsene\Documents\My Web Sites\PAWS.Web-Site14" />
    </application>
    <bindings>
        <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:44310:localhost" />
    </bindings>
</site>

But I need it to have the binding protocol set to HTTPS like so:

<binding protocol="https" bindingInformation="*:44310:localhost" />

I can either manually enter that into the applicationhost.config. Or I can run the appcmd.exe like so to configure it.

"%ProgramFiles(x86)%\IIS Express\appcmd.exe" set site /site.name:PAWS.Web-Site /bindings:https/*:44310:localhost

But either of these 2 methods is not what I want. I don't want to have to explain to every developer that works on this project to have to manually edit their IIS Express settings before they can even load the project.

How to recreate the problem:

This is easily re-createable by first closing VS2012. Then deleting the config folder for IIS Express located in

%USERPROFILE%\Documents\IISExpress

and then open VS2012 and also open the solution to the MVC4 project that's configured to use IIS Express with https. Now, VS2012 will fail to load the project and complain about no secure bindings.

What am I doing wrong or how can I fix this so that people who get latest on my project will just be able to run it?

Our team is experiencing this same issue. Might be slightly off topic, but I was wondering if upgrading to VS 2013 would fix it? Can anyone comment on that? — BlakeH, Dec 13 '13 at 14:21

score 10 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 29 '13 at 19:30

10

I have recently come across this same problem, and I've been able to determine why it's happening.

Visual Studio is using the Project Url setting to set the IIS Express http binding, and then it looks at the IISExpressSSLPort setting to set the https binding.

However, if you've changed the Project Url to an https address, that is when Visual Studio gets confused. For the purposes of IIS Express binding updating, it assumes that you've entered an http address for the Project Url and doesn't seem to be able to handle an https address being there.

This complicates things since changing the Project Url to an https address is the only way I've found to make Visual Studio start debugging the https url by default.

So, this seems to be a problem in how Visual Studio is handling the IIS Express binding updates. I'm not aware of a good workaround that allows both the automated binding updates and to start debugging with the https address loaded.

answered Jan 29 '13 at 19:30

Brandon Ording

456
3
11

I agree. This was my first thought as well. – Jaguir Apr 19 '13 at 16:26
This should be marked as the answer considering its a bug. If I come across a work around, I will share. – Jaguir Apr 19 '13 at 16:33
1

I ended up just wrapping my `Filters.Add(new RequireHttpsAttribute());` in a `#if !DEBUG`. I don't really need SSL locally. – Jaguir Apr 19 '13 at 16:41
We'll I could just mock the authentication for development but I wanted it to actually use ADFS even during development. And ADFS requires that the relying party use https. – Evan Larsen Jun 21 '13 at 22:05

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 08 '13 at 22:26

This looks like it might be a bug in VS2012... The only way I've been able to handle this is by hand editing the IISExpress configuration file: applicationhost.config, located under C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\Documents\IISExpress\config. Then under 'sites' I modified the block for the specific application's website:

    <site name="YourSite" id="1">
    <application path="/" applicationPool="Clr4IntegratedAppPool">
                <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="c:\..." />
            </application>
            <bindings>
                <binding protocol="https" bindingInformation="*:YOUR_PORT_#:localhost" />
            </bindings>
    </site>

Change the 'binding protocol' to 'https' and make sure you start Visual Studio 2012 with Admin privileges, at least until the site is created/modified in IIS Express.

Hope this helps...

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 20 '14 at 18:21

3

I can confirm that Visual Studio 2013 is free from this issue.

Upgrading from VS2012 to 2013 solved the problem for me.

answered Apr 20 '14 at 18:21

zuraff

1,383
2
14
18

I'm using VS2015 and had the same issue. The answer of *Kevin Stricker* solved my problem. – Andre Soares Mar 07 '16 at 18:26

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 19 '12 at 16:10

1

You need to set SSL Enabled to True in the project's properties list in order to have that binding show up automatically. (per Scott Hanselman)

As seen in Visual Studio 2010

answered Nov 19 '12 at 16:10

Kevin Stricker

17,178
5
45
71

1

Tried that. The project still will not load on another Team members machine. – Evan Larsen Nov 19 '12 at 21:03

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 03 '12 at 11:29

1

Have you tried opening the project as an admin (run VS2012 as an administrator)?

Usually when you get the above errors (configuring web xxx for ASP.NET 4.5 failed...) and (creation of the virtual directory xxx failed) is because visual studio does not have enough privileges.

May not be your problem, but it doesn't hurt to try.

answered Dec 03 '12 at 11:29

Yag

546
2
7
12

Yes, I have tried that. VS2012 requires that you open the project as admin in order to create the sites. But for some reason VS2012 doesnt create the HTTPS bindings automatically. Thats what I'm hoping someone will show me how to do. – Evan Larsen Dec 06 '12 at 21:06

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 16 '13 at 18:50

First of all, thank you for providing the steps to reproduce this on your local machine. Other team members were having this issue, but since I created the project, I did not experience it. This allowed me the opportunity to experiment with some different solutions.

What I have found works best in the current environment (no fix from MS) is to leave the project url as the http value, but change the start url to the https value. Most developers should be comfortable changing that in VS.

This works on new machines without requiring someone running a bat file to configure the https site. You do have two bindings in IIS Express (http and https), but other than that, it seems to work well enough.

Doug McClean · Answer 7 · 2013-01-24T19:52:02.027

Have you tried to manually configure the port in the .csproj file? Once you've configured it there, it should carry over to other workstations:

<IISExpressSSLPort>44310</IISExpressSSLPort>

Also, the project's user file can still cause issues even with the "Apply server settings to all users" option checked. I normally just delete the user file when I fix SSL issues with IIS Express, because it's much easier to just reconfigure my user settings after I've fixed my issue.

philreed · Answer 8 · 2013-11-18T17:00:23.437

I have recently had a very similar issue and came across this post when trying to resolve. One thing I have noticed is that IIS Express seems to get very distressed if more than one site is set up with a HTTPS binding in the applicationhost.config file.

In my case, I had 2 sites set up to use the same SSL binding to port 44300, changing the port number on one of the SSL bindings on one of the sites caused errors similar to the ones in the OP. I ended up having to remove one of the sites, which is not ideal.

After a little more digging, I tried toggling the 'Require SSL' property from true to false, and back to true. This triggered an update the applicationhost.config which created a new SSL binding with a new port number.

I got into this mess because I had copied an existing project and my config was trying to share ports between 2 sites.

score 0 · Answer 9 · edited Apr 27 '15 at 21:10

0

I see two options:

Enable the Apply server setting to all users (store in project file) option on the Web tab to move binding configuration into your project file.

or
Add your project's user file to source control.

Either approach will allow users to get latest and run without issue.

edited Apr 27 '15 at 21:10

OhBeWise

5,350
3
32
60

answered Apr 27 '15 at 20:32

Sean O'Brien

183
7

Having problems using IIS Express SSL with VS2012 and a Team

The Problem:

How to recreate the problem:

9 Answers9