Not so long ago I needed to write a little piece of code to allow some to recycle the application from within a web application. Ok, recycling the AppPool that would be running the web application sounded a bit silly, but any other AppPool would be possible. Enter the world of WMI. Or rather, take a glimpse inside, because there's no way this post will do justice to the power of System.Management. Here's the little piece that I wrote, transformed into a console application.
1: static void ListApplicationPools(string hostname)
2: { 3: string ClassPath = @"\\" + hostname + @"\root\microsoftiisv2:IIsApplicationPoolSetting";
4: ManagementClass WmiObject = new ManagementClass(ClassPath);
5:
6: foreach(ManagementObject child in WmiObject.GetInstances())
7: { 8: char[] SplitChar = "/".ToCharArray();
9: Console.WriteLine(child.ToString().Split(SplitChar)[child.ToString().Split(SplitChar).Length-1].Replace(@"""",""));
10: }
11: }
The first method lists the application pools that are on the specified host. So you can run this method on the localhost, but also on a remote server, as long as you have administrative access to the specified host.
1: static void RunAppPoolCommand(string hostname, string command, string apppoolname)
2: { 3: string ClassPath = @"\\" + hostname + @"\root\microsoftiisv2:IIsApplicationPool='W3SVC/AppPools/" + apppoolname + "'";
4: ManagementObject WmiObject = new ManagementObject(ClassPath);
5:
6: InvokeMethodOptions Options = new InvokeMethodOptions();
7: Options.Timeout = new TimeSpan(0,0,10);
8:
9: ManagementBaseObject InParams = WmiObject.GetMethodParameters(command);
10: ManagementBaseObject OutParams = WmiObject.InvokeMethod(command, null, Options);
11:
12: if (InParams != null) InParams.Dispose();
13: if (OutParams != null) OutParams.Dispose();
14: }
The second method allows you to send commands to the specified Application Pool. These commands can be: stop, start and recycle.
You see, it's very easy... once you know how. You can download the compiled binary here.