Now, you have your first program and want to release (publish) to the public. I will explain this in three articles. The process requires time and efforts.

Let’s look at the project folder first. It should look like this.

TestTechAddinWeb folder holds all your web program and TestTechAddin folder mainly holds the manifest file of your program in the TestTechAddinManifest subfolder,

1. TestTechAddinWeb: all your program files are hoste here

2. TestTechAddin/TestTechAddinManifest: holds TestTechAddin.xml file. This XML file describes your program such as where it is hosted, where are the icons, etc.

On Solution Explorer in VS, click TestTechAddinWeb. Then at the bottom you will see it’s properties. Especially, SSL URL (https://localhost:44365/, in my case) is the url address that your program is hosted in VS. What does that mean?

Let’s press the start button on VS.

This will start a webserver (local) on your computer. Open a web browser and type your SSL URL (e.g. https://localhost:44365/). You will see that TestTechAddinWeb folder is served as a physical path. In actual publication, this whole TestTechAddinWeb folder must go to a real webserver (I am going to explain using Azure later). Whenever you press the start button, VS starts this web service to simulate your program is hosted on some webserver.

Let’s stop the program. On Solution Explorer in VS, let’s double click TestTechAddinManifest.

You will find many “~remoteAppUrl”s. Again, this manifest file explains about your program: where are the button images, where is the Home.html file, etc. When you debug on VS, you can think that VS replace this “~remoteAppUrl” to your local host “https://localhost:44365/“.

In real publication, you need to replace all “~remoteAppUrl” to your acutal URLs (this will be explained in the later post).

So, this is how the publication works.

1) Your entire program should be hosted in a web service (somewhere). Your program files are located in the TestTechAddinWeb folder.

2) Then we need a manifest file that describes your program such as where (URL) can you find it, where are the button images, where can you find help, etc. The manifest file is located at \TestTechAddin\TestTechAddinManifest\TestTechAddin.xml. Currently, this manifest file indicates that your program is hosted in a localhost. Eventually, this manifest file must be posted on the Microsoft Store. Then your program is available to the public finally (this will be in the later post).

That’s it for today.