NetBash – An Alternative to Admin Pages in Asp.Net Web Apps

added by lukenlowrey

12/12/2011 12:25:35 AM

659 Views

NetBash is a drop in (think mvc mini profiler) extendable command line for your web application.

Read the full story

13 comments

dpeterson

12/12/2011 8:59:55 AM

That's pretty slick, after integrating security it might be a neat feature to add for power users as well, giving them the ability to interesting things like change their site password, post new comments, etc.

Maybe I should try to add something like this for the mods at DNK....;-)

pwhe23

12/15/2011 8:32:41 AM

This is a really neat idea. I like following the mini-profiler style of integration in to the site. With a plug-in model, it would be easy for the community to create a library of commands that could be shared among sites.

dpeterson

12/19/2011 1:29:43 PM

Yeah, I'm envisioning replacing the "share this" buttons with command line tools that directly integrate with social media...just as an example ;-)

Noldorin

12/19/2011 6:04:27 PM

I agree, this is pretty cool. What about just exposing REST resources on the site which a console program on the desktop could connect to, though? This doesn't even touch web UI, which is advantageous in my mind. I don't see any down-sides either.

dpeterson

12/19/2011 8:40:48 PM

Yeah I think there are *tons* of possibilities here. Web developers can provide power users with the full suite of site functionality without relying on the UI to do it.

dpeterson

12/19/2011 8:42:43 PM

I had another thought about this. What if we leveraged userscripts in the browser? You could run a console in your browser that imported the exported APIs of sites leveraging this. In essence it's just like the type of mashups you see today, except that the user is in control of how the sites are mashed up.

bradygaster

12/19/2011 9:27:47 PM

This IS a very nifty idea.

javery

12/20/2011 8:33:12 AM

This looks interesting - but I don't see any commands listed. Trying to imagine what commands you would use here that you couldn't accomplish with something purely on the client side and leveraging response headers.

dpeterson

12/20/2011 8:57:01 AM

Are you talking about commands as far as what we'd consider "built-in" commands in bash, or commands that you can perform on the site?
The former, if it's not built in, would have to be created. I didn't look to see if it has any concept of pipes yet (which is what would make it incredibly useful), but as for commands needed for the site, it uses reflection to find the commands exposed.
I think it's more useful for power users because just like bash programming, it's sometimes easier to make a quick and dirty script.

mhardy

12/20/2011 9:19:08 AM

Interesting. My first thought while reading was 'membership provider' only to come to the last sentence. :) That would be very useful indeed.

lukenlowrey

12/20/2011 4:47:29 PM

A mate of mine has started on some commands for membership here - https://github.com/bjcull/NetBash.Membership

benjii

12/20/2011 6:04:12 PM

It's also in NuGet: Install-Package NetBash.Membership

jongalloway

12/31/2011 6:25:30 PM

Great idea!