I have an existing product that runs in .Net 4.5.1 as a windows service. It currently hosts some WCF services for controlling and reporting on the product.
I now have a requirement to host a basic web application (ideally ASP.Net, but HTML and JS would do) within the windows service as well, for configuring the product.
We ideally don't want a separate install of a website/IIS as a requirement, so I really need to be able to do all this from the windows service itself. I will be calling into the WCF methods for some functionality, but I would ideally be able to run some .Net C# code as well.
I've looked about and all the stuff I find is for hosting web services within a windows service, or incredibly old stuff from 2010 or before.
I've looked into the ApplicationHost.CreateApplicationHost stuff, but the one tutorial I found involved adding stuff to the GAC, setting windows environment variables etc, which again, I would rather avoid and keep my stuff all fairly isolated.
Related
I've developed a Windows service. It installs, runs and serves its purpose. To view the results it produces, I'd like to add a simple web page with Select * from the database the services works with.
Would someone please elaborate on how to make Windows service serve a web page?
Ideally, I'd like to learn from the code of a similar project
ps. IIS is already installed on the host where the service runs
Turned out easier than I thought https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUPg41kG_kw&ab_channel=BoostMyTool
I've achieved something like this by making use of the Worker Services in .NET Core and configuring the service to run as a Windows Service.
And because I had a worker service in .NET Core, I could easily add HTTP workloads like MVC or Blazor.
In my example, I had a windows service running worker tasks as well as a Blazor UI to show the details of what was happening (I scaffolded the Blazor code fist and then added the worker via AddHostedService).
The benefit of this is that the .NET Core is acting as the server do this process didn't need IIS on the platform plus both areas of the system are part of the same process.
If the above isn't suitable (or requires a huge migration to .NET Core), then I'd suggest using Named Pipes to communication from one process (your windows service) to another (your web-app).
I have a web site and would like to expose certain functionalities using WCF.
Before deciding which type of WCF project I need to use I wanted to compare the differences between WCF Class library and WCF application. I know this question has been asked many times and answered many times and the answers are usually about different hosting options each one offers but I wanted to try and see the differences, so this is what I tried:
Step 1 - In a same solution, I have created a WCF Service library project and created Client console app project, set the console app as a startup project, referenced the service library project from the client project
and in the client console app I could instantiate the service and can consume the service methods. I didn't even add a service reference to the client project.
Step 2 - In a same solution, I have created a WCF Service application project and created Client console app project, set the console app as a startup project, referenced the service application project from the client project
and in the client console app I could instantiate the service and can consume the service methods. I didn't even add a service reference to the client project.
On both steps after compiling the solutions I was able to copy the client app's exe and the service dll's to a different location and still be able to run the clients.
Based on this little excercie I am confused about the hosting part. It seems wether I use WCF Class library or WCF application type I get the same result.
This is just like using multiple projects in a solution, you reference one from another and use the methods, there must be something I am missing which highlights the differences between the two and highlights the benefits of using WCF, also in the past I remember I had to add a service reference to the clients apps in order to consume the service, why is this not the case here?
Thanks
1) Running a wcf service application allows you to provide communication into a single application, where you have a single instance of a thing you want to provide access to. Maybe this is a game, or a chat room without an external state engine or datastore. This is useful for providing diagnostic information about an application you might have written for example. I used this to provide external control for an industrial robot that I wanted to provide remote control access for.
That is to say, that you write an application, it has a function. You want to expose part of that functionality to remote applications. You do this by adding a WCF endpoint to your existing application, so your application itself is controlling the WCF hosting elements, lifecycle of the endpoint etc.
2) Running a WCF Service is for when you've got an external data store, or your service is stateless. A translation service, lookup service and web page requests fall into this category.
With a service class, you're saying here is this service, this thing that provides a function. It isn't tied to the lifecycle of another application or process and is typically hosted by IIS. IIS manages when the class is loaded and run based on the requests that come into it. These services have no internal persistence and rely on an external datastore, or are, by nature, stateless (think of a postcode lookup, or a calculator service)
It sounds like you're actually adding the projects as references, rather than connecting to them as services. That is to say, that the consuming application is actually loading the service as an assembly (in the same application/ memory space) rather than as a separate application/ service that your application then uses WCF to communicate with.
The WCF Service Application template can be used to create WCF services with a hosting website created within the project
The WCF Service Library template can be used to create WCF services that are hosted by the WCF Service Host, and these can be tested using the WCF service Test Client.
the biggest advantage of using a standalone library (apart from decoupling the logic) is that you can easily migrate your service, i.e. host it in another application or another type of application. E.g., let's say you're hosting your service using IIS - you can easily move your service to a standalone application, etc.
I have developed a C# Windows Service application with certain methods that I would like to call from an ASP.NET web application (it is important that there are these methods returning the result). My initial guess was that I could import the dll of the Windows Service into the web application, but I can find only the executable of the windows service, there's no dll at all.
Is it possible to compile the Windows Service into a dll? And if not, is there some other way I can reference my Web Service into the Web application?
Extract the common functionality into a class library project and reference it from both projects.
Is your windows service hosting a web service or does it just contain code that needs to be accessible in you windows service and web site?
If the former, then you can connect to it via the normal mechanims for connecting to a web service (e.g. adding a service reference in Visual Studio). If the later, then create a class library that both your windows service project and web project can reference (via Add Reference in Visual Studio).
You have two options. If you just need the code to be invoked, then you can call the windows service functionality via a custom action on the service, invoked from your code.
However, I gather that what you require is more complex, requiring a response as well. In this case, as per sga101, encapsulate the appropriate functionality into a separate class, and use this in both places. This means that the code projects should both be included in the same solution ( it is not strictly necessary, but it makes it easiest to keep the code matching ).
I want to access a remote SQL database for my Silverlight client. I know that there are various ways to do this (Entity Framework model, Linq to SQL), but all of those rely on something in the web project (or, at least, all of the tutorials I've read do). What's unusual for me is that there is no web project, which of course prevents me from using various assemblies.
The only thing I do have which might be useful is a WCF service running on IIS, which will have less limitations (and I can add that as a service reference in my SL project). But I'm not even sure if this is a feasible option for this problem.
Any solutions or suggestions would be great.
Thanks.
Edit: Thanks for the suggestions guys, but here's a little more: I am making an individual XAP that is loaded into something else (someone else's project is importing and loading the XAP files), so I don't have access to the web component. The loader itself will be hosted within a website (at least, I assume it will be).
I already have a WCF service set up which is currently hosted in IIS, so I can potentially create something here. How? Well, it seems I can generate the ORM classes using SQLMetal.exe, and then import that code into the WCF service. This will allow the service to make calls to the remote database and have that data returned in C# classes. The perhaps I'll make those data classes as ServiceContracts and pass the data that way. What's the problem here? Well, to be honest, I'm not really sure how it would work. I mean, I call the WCF Service from the SL application, which does its thing. It then must contact the SL application (I have no idea how to do that part) and send along a load of data. It would be great if someone had has experience of this and would offer some suggestions. I know it's not really how you're supposed to do it, but I've drawn the short straw so I'm stuck with it.
Ok, so if I understand it correctly, you use a Silverlight application (XAP) which is started locally from a network share or something? Because why would you not have a web project when using Silverlight? (is there no server available to host it?)
But ok, when that is the case, you can access a WCF service from Silverlight. However it has some limititations. For instance you can only use asynchronous calls to the service, and you can only use WCF basichttpbinding as binding for the WCF service.
See: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc197959%28v=vs.95%29.aspx
First, I would recommend you use WPF instead of Silverlight for this project. If you're not using this as a web client, then WPF is a million times easier / better.
But if that's not a possibility:
You can write a self-hosted WCF service and run it somewhere accessible. Self-hosted will allow for WCF connections to connect without the IIS necessary. In your self-hosted program you need:
Front end WCF defined
Back end SQL database
Depending on how smart this client needs to be, a BusinessLogic layer to transform the data from WCF to SQL.
Silverlight is sandboxed, so it can only access its own Web application. Therefore, your best bet is to include a WCF or ASMX web service in your web application that handles the DB access.
If you don't want to run a sandboxed UI on a Web application, you cannot use Silverlight but should use WebForms or Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) instead.
I'm migrating an old Delphi application that I wrote into C#. The application is a datalogger that exposes logged data requests via a SOAP web service interface.
The web service is contained with the delphi graphical windows application, i.e. no need to run a web server like IIS, etc I just run the application and it's up and running under the hood.
I'm looking to do the same in my c# Windows form application, I can find loads of resources on writing web services that are ultimately hosted within IIS but am struggling to find a solution for a self contained web service within my application.
Does anyone have any suggestions or can point me towards any resources on this?
The web service does not neceserily have to be SOAP, REST is fine (in fact probably prefered).
Look into WCF Services.
Hosting and Consuming WCF Services
Hosting WCF services in a Windows Forms Application
The System.Web.Hosting namespace allows you to host ASP.Net pages without using IIS within your applications. I have never used it to host web services but I found a tutorial that seems to provide a guide on doing this-
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163879.aspx
If you're wanting to host a service inside your application, it's possible with the System.ServiceModel.ServiceHost class. You need to learn WCF first, but that at least answers your question to get you started. If you have any further questions, leave me a comment or two and I'll update my answer to accommodate your inquiries.