How can I look up IIS site id in C#?

I am writing an installer class for my web service. In many cases when I use WMI (e.g. when creating virtual directories) I have to know the siteId to provide the correct metabasePath to the site, e.g.:

metabasePath is of the form "IIS://<servername>/<service>/<siteID>/Root[/<vdir>]"
for example "IIS://localhost/W3SVC/1/Root"

How can I look it up programmatically in C#, based on the name of the site (e.g. for "Default Web Site")?

From stackoverflow

• Maybe not the best way, but here we do it the following way :

  1. loop through all the sites under "IIS://servername/service"
  2. for each of the sites check if the name is "Default Web Site" in your case
  3. if true then you have your site id

  In Visual Basic 6 (sorry, all the code I have at hand just now) this would be it :

  Dim oSite As IADsContainer
  Dim oService As IADsContainer
  Set oService = GetObject("IIS://localhost/W3SVC")
  For Each oSite In oService
      If IsNumeric(oSite.Name) Then
          If oSite.ServerComment = "Default Web Site" Then
              Debug.Print "Your id = " & oSite.Name
          End If
      End If
  Next
  

• Here is how to get it by name. You can modify as needed.

   public int GetWebSiteId(string serverName, string websiteName)
          {
              int result = -1;
  
              DirectoryEntry w3svc = new DirectoryEntry(string.Format("IIS://{0}/w3svc", serverName));
  
              foreach (DirectoryEntry site in w3svc.Children)
              {
                  if (site.Properties["ServerComment"] != null)
                  {
                      if (site.Properties["ServerComment"].Value != null)
                      {
                          if (string.Compare(site.Properties["ServerComment"].Value.ToString(), websiteName, 
  
                           false) == 0)
                          {
                              result = site.Name;
                              break;
                          }
                      }
                  }
              }
  
              return result;
          }
  

  MattH : On my system I had to update the above with the following to get it to compile "result = Convert.ToInt32(site.Name);"

• You can search for a site by inspecting the ServerComment property belonging to children of the metabase path IIS://Localhost/W3SVC that have a SchemaClassName of IIsWebServer.

  The following code demonstrates two approaches:

  string siteToFind = "Default Web Site";
  
  // The Linq way
  using (DirectoryEntry w3svc1 = new DirectoryEntry("IIS://Localhost/W3SVC"))
  {
      IEnumerable<DirectoryEntry> children = 
            w3svc1.Children.Cast<DirectoryEntry>();
  
      var sites = 
          (from de in children
           where
            de.SchemaClassName == "IIsWebServer" &&
            de.Properties["ServerComment"].Value.ToString() == siteToFind
           select de).ToList();
      if(sites.Count() > 0)
      {
          // Found matches...assuming ServerComment is unique:
          Console.WriteLine(sites[0].Name);
      }
  }
  
  // The old way
  using (DirectoryEntry w3svc2 = new DirectoryEntry("IIS://Localhost/W3SVC"))
  {
  
      foreach (DirectoryEntry de in w3svc2.Children)
      {
       if (de.SchemaClassName == "IIsWebServer" && 
           de.Properties["ServerComment"].Value.ToString() == siteToFind)
       {
        // Found match
        Console.WriteLine(de.Name);
       }
      }
  }
  

  This assumes that the ServerComment property has been used (IIS MMC forces its used) and is unique.

  Kev

• private static string FindWebSiteByName(string serverName, string webSiteName)
  {
   DirectoryEntry w3svc = new DirectoryEntry("IIS://" + serverName + "/W3SVC");
   foreach (DirectoryEntry site in w3svc.Children)
   {
    if (site.SchemaClassName == "IIsWebServer"
     && site.Properties["ServerComment"] != null
     && site.Properties["ServerComment"].Value != null
     && string.Equals(webSiteName, site.Properties["ServerComment"].Value.ToString(), StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
    {
     return site.Path;
    }
   }
  
   return null;
  }
  

• public static ManagementObject GetWebServerSettingsByServerComment(string serverComment)
          {
              ManagementObject returnValue = null;
  
              ManagementScope iisScope = new ManagementScope(@"\\localhost\root\MicrosoftIISv2", new ConnectionOptions());
              iisScope.Connect();
              if (iisScope.IsConnected)
              {
                  ObjectQuery settingQuery = new ObjectQuery(String.Format(
                      "Select * from IIsWebServerSetting where ServerComment = '{0}'", serverComment));
  
                  ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(iisScope, settingQuery);
                  ManagementObjectCollection results = searcher.Get();
  
                  if (results.Count > 0)
                  {
                      foreach (ManagementObject manObj in results)
                      {
                          returnValue = manObj;
  
                          if (returnValue != null)
                          {
                              break;
                          }
                      }
                  }
              }
  
              return returnValue;
          }
  

  Grzenio : Does it work with IIS version <7? Unfortunately I am stuck with Win2k3

  Helephant : This method works for IIS6. I used it to find app pools.

• Do you guys know how IIS 6.0 actually generates this ID number for each site? My server admin person is worried that if I set up a site using a random ID number, that IIS might in the future try to use that same number to generate a different site.

  Thanks

  Grzenio : You have to ask a new question. This is not a standard discussion site, noone is going to answer this one.