Re: Rerouting Requests via a Proxy because of .NET "bug"

From: Codex Twin (codex_at_more.com)
Date: 12/03/04 

Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 16:51:51 -0000

"John Saunders" <johnwsaundersiii at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:OWxmIVV2EHA.2592@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
> "Codex Twin" <codex@more.com> wrote in message
> news:eE$3U6U2EHA.3132@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> >I am re-sending this in the hope that it might illicit a response. I have
a
> > corporate client who forces their workstations to get the proxy server
> > details using an automatic proxy discovery script.
> >
> > Unfortunately, the .NET Framework does not support automatic proxy
> > discovery
> > scripts. See:
> > http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;%5BLN%5D;307220
>
> This article has nothing to do with web forms applications. In a Web Forms
> application, the browser sends a request to the server and gets an HTML
> response. The browser may be configured to run an automatic proxy
discovery
> script and to use the discovered proxy to send to the server. The server
> should neither know nor care whether one or more proxies were in the path
> between the client and the server.
>
> > The article above details that the way to workaround this is to edit the
> > machine.config file. This is impossible for me. Luckily there is a
> > programmtic way of assigning the proxy settings. The way to do it is
> > detailed in this article:
> > http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q318140/
> >
> > The second article explains how to handle requests when there is a proxy
> > server between the .NET client and the web service. Unfortunately the
> > solution only deals with Web Services. The WebService class has a Proxy
> > property to which an object of type of IWebProxy can be passed - and all
> > is
> > good.
>
> ...
>
> > But in my case, I have an ASP.NET web forms app, not a Web Service. So
how
> > do I try and route my client requests via the Proxy server
> > programmatically?
>
> As I said, "you don't, the browser does".
>
> Obviously something isn't working the way you expect it to, and that makes
> you think that you need to do something about proxies. Please tell us what
> the symptom is, and we can help you find the disease. The disease is
> probably not "server-side proxy setup".
>
> John Saunders
>
>

John

The scenario is this: The server application I have built uses the ChartFX
(by SoftwareFX) control. This control causes the download of half a dozen or
so "client-side components". These are nothing more than .NET assemblies
which allow all the fancy dynamic chart customisation tools on the browser.
One of the conditions for the client-side dlls to work is that the client
machine has to have the .NET framework installed.

These same machines, being behind the firewall, uses the automatic proxy
discovery script to determine the proxy server settings.
Now, because of the problem detailed in the first article
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;%5BLN%5D;307220) and the
fact that the .NET Framework does not support proxy discovery scripts, the
client machine cannot see get the proxy server settings and the charts fail.

When the machine.config file is amended as the article explains, then it
works. I do not have access to their machine.config files, hence the
programmatic way of supplying proxy server settings as detailed in the
second article, which as you have rightly said, only deals with Web
Services.

My problem has been where to impose this programmatic code, and what the
correct code is.