I've done something like this several times in the past, and here's what's worked for me:
Create an IHttpHandler implementation (easiest to do as an .ashx file) to handle a convert. Within the handler, use System.Diagnostics.Process and ProcessStartInfo to run your command line utility. You should be able to redirect the standard output to the output stream of your HTTP response. Here's some code:
public class ConvertHandler : IHttpHandler
{
#region IHttpHandler Members
bool IHttpHandler.IsReusable
{
get { return false; }
}
void IHttpHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
{
var jobID = Guid.NewGuid();
// retrieve the posted csv file
var csvFile = context.Request.Files["csv"];
// save the file to disk so the CMD line util can access it
var filePath = Path.Combine("csv", String.Format("{0:n}.csv", jobID));
csvFile.SaveAs(filePath);
var psi = new ProcessStartInfo("mycsvutil.exe", String.Format("-file {0}", filePath))
{
WorkingDirectory = Environment.CurrentDirectory,
UseShellExecute = false,
RedirectStandardOutput = true,
RedirectStandardError = true,
CreateNoWindow = true
};
using (var process = new Process { StartInfo = psi })
{
// delegate for writing the process output to the response output
Action<Object, DataReceivedEventArgs> dataReceived = ((sender, e) =>
{
if (e.Data != null) // sometimes a random event is received with null data, not sure why - I prefer to leave it out
{
context.Response.Write(e.Data);
context.Response.Write(Environment.NewLine);
context.Response.Flush();
}
});
process.OutputDataReceived += new DataReceivedEventHandler(dataReceived);
process.ErrorDataReceived += new DataReceivedEventHandler(dataReceived);
// use text/plain so line breaks and any other whitespace formatting is preserved
context.Response.ContentType = "text/plain";
// start the process and start reading the standard and error outputs
process.Start();
process.BeginErrorReadLine();
process.BeginOutputReadLine();
// wait for the process to exit
process.WaitForExit();
// an exit code other than 0 generally means an error
if (process.ExitCode != 0)
{
context.Response.StatusCode = 500;
}
}
}
#endregion
}