I am a total newbie to the WCF world. I have an ASP.net (v4) website running on our dedicated windows 2008 server box. I'll refer to the website as, webisteA.com
I'm creating a new website, websiteB.com.au and I'd like to expose the functionality in WebsiteA.com to the new site. Things like logging in, registering in the database etc.
I think the best way to do this is to create a WCF service which sits in WebsiteA.com - but I am struggling to find any tutorials on how to do this. There are lots about creating a new project, but not that many about adding a WCF service to existing websites.
Is this the best way to do it? In the future I'd also like to use the service for mobile apps in the future too - not sure if that will make a difference.
OR - do I create a new service in a new app which is totally seperate to websiteA.com and websiteB.com and host this as website0.com and expose the database via that?
The questions I don't have answers for are...
is it restful? Do I use XML or JSON?
Baiscally, I want to be able to use it like an API - for example, saying "show me all the members who meet criteria X".
Thanks for any information.
ps) I have visual studio express 2010 c# (and a trial of studio pro)
You can certainly include WCF within the website A project - but have you considered the ASP.NET Web API? I haven't used it yet - but did use the earlier WCF Web API which spawned it.
Neat features include Content Negotiation (if the client asks for XML the API sends XML. If it asks for JSON is gets JSON) and a lot less config cruft (WCF web.configs are dreadful and completely overcomplicated IMO)
It's probably a lot easier to make a RESTy API with the ASP.NET Web API than with standard WCF.
A great open-source .NET solution is NancyFX which is really worth a look too.
Related
I have been looking up on youtube regarding Web Services being consume using android. Most of the video are all 1 or 2 years old. Is this doing outdated? is there a better way to do this? currently i am in a company and i was assign to have a android version of their webservice.
I was told to create the service with sql using Visual studio.
Create the android UI and using the services to pull the data.
Am i doing it right?
What is the better or ideal way of going about this?
Should i add JavaScript or something like that?
I have been looking at RESTful , Soap , Json and Wcf. But what is the best way to go if i have to start everything from scratch?
-Programs/System that i am using.
Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2013 for Web
SQL server
IIS express
Android Studio
*I was told to only user framework 4.0 for Visual studio
You can use WCF (SOAP), WCF (RESTful) or WebApi to create a service, both has it's own advantages and disadvantages. You may want to take some time to look at your requirement and then decide what type of service you want to develop. SOAP uses a more complicated messaging pattern using XML, where as REST uses the standard HTTP protocol and methods to communicate and transfer data. But if you are planning consume this service across of variety of applications like mobile, web, desktop, client side script interaction etc, you may consider developing the service as a RESTful. More information on SOAP and RESTful and for detailed understanding you may refer to this link
Understanding SOAP and RESTful
I was tasked at work to create a web application (viewable in Firefox on Linux!) that displays results in a tabular format using data exposed by a WCF service (written in C#) hosted on a separate Windows 7 machine on the same network. Rather than returning formatted HTML, the WCF service returns structs and it will be up to the client application to take these objects, pull out the data, and format it.
Unfortunately, it has been a couple years since I have worked with any sort of web technologies. What is the best approach to solve this problem? Is there anything more current than REST/AJAX/JSON/jQuery technologies? If anyone can point out some helpful and current resources on the proper way to accomplish this, it would be most appreciated.
Use a SOAP framework to consume the WCF service. Configure WCF to use SOAP (one of the HTTP-bindings).
Webservices are easy to consume these days thanks to a standard RPC format (SOAP) and libraries supporting it. You can surely find a SOAP client for any language you are proficient in.
Checking back in here to report my own solution for this problem. I ended up going a bit of a different route that produced the simplest solution for the situation. Instead of consuming any services on the Linux side, I simply made an ASP.NET website on the Windows/IIS side (where it is easy to consume the WCF services right from Visual Studio), and then just render the website on the Linux side via the URL in a Firefox browser. For me, that fulfilled the customer requirements and was perfect, although this may not be the best approach for others that need to work with or manipulate the data in some way.
I'm new to WebServices.
I want to create (very simple) WebService application with database (maybe MS-SQL) and user authentication (log in, log out) and some function that check is user is logged in before returning any result.
I found this http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cpp/WebServiceAuthentication.aspx
I don't want anyone doing my job for me. I just need some hints about how to begin with that.
I'll be using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.
How can I use this webservice in winforms application?
Traditional Webservices (.asmx) have given way to the new WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) Services (.svc). These have a lot more granularity control over everything, which is a good and bad. If you aren't familiar with webservices already, I would say try to get the concepts right first - as in the high level architecture of how it works (communication, SOAP, and the protocols needed).
Then specifically for visual studio and how to create them, MSDN has a good starter tutorial: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t745kdsh.aspx (this is done the traditional .asmx way, which is not bad at all)
The codeproject URL you have is fine, but I think it requiures that you know the basic concepts first... and it is specifically for making an authentication web service. My take is if you know how to create 'a' webservice, then making the authentication ws will be very easy..
If you are interested in WCF services (which I recommend you hold of till later) this is a good reference as well: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms734712.aspx
Following the KISS principle, I suddenly realised the following:
In .NET, you can use the Entity Model Framework to wrap around a database.
This model can be exposed as a web service through WCF.
This web service would have a very standardized definition.
A client application could be created which could consume any such RESTful web service.
I don't want to re-invent the wheel and it wouldn't surprise me if someone has already done this, so my question is simple: Has anyone already created a simple (desktop, not web) client application that can consume a RESTful service that's based on the Entity Framework and which will allow the user to read and write data directly to this service?
Otherwise, I'll just have to "invent" this myself. :-)Problem is, the database layer and RESTful service is already finished. The RESTful service will only stay in the project during it's development phase, since we can use the database-layer assembly directly from the web applications that are build around it. When the web application is deployed, the RESTful services are just kept out of the deployment.
But the database has a lot of data to manage over nearly 50 tables. When developing against a local database, we can have straight access to the database so I wouldn't need this tool for this. When it's deployed, the web application would be the only way to access the data so I could not use this tool. But we're also having a test phase where the database is stored on another system outside the local domain and this database is not available for developers. Only administrators have direct access to this database, making tests a bit more complex.
However, through the RESTful service, I can still access the data directly. Thus, when some test goes wrong, I can repair the data through this connection or just create a copy of the data for tests on my local system. There's plenty of other functionality and it's even possible to just open the URL to a table service straight in Excel or XMLSpy to see the contents. But when I want to write something back, I have to write special code to do just that. A generic tool that would allow me to access the data and modify it would be easier. Since it's a generic setup around the ADO.NET Data services, this should be reasonable easy too.
Thus, I can do it but hoped someone else has already done something similar. But it appears that there's no such tool made yet...
You are referring to ADO.Net Data Services. It basically creates an Entity Database Model and adds a REST frontend to the service using ASMX. There is a How To article availble from MSDN here on consuming the service using .Net. I have also done the same thing using the normally WebClient class in .Net in the past.
You can also look at the WCF REST Starter Kit if you want to roll your own based on Entity Framework. The starter kit also contains a handy new WebClient class that can be used to communicate with REST services.
Clarification
There is no prebuilt application client that I am aware off which will talk to these service, since they are pretty much accessing the data using Web Services. There is the Microsoft Smart Client Factory which is most likely the closest thing I have worked with.
I mentioned the above 2 options since they already have libraries in .Net that work with them directly, either as a referenced Web Service, or for the more adventurious, myself included, using the WebClient library or alternatively the new HTTPClient library in the WCF REST Starter kit.
I have used both, in Windows, Web, Silverlight and WCF. The latter being the easiest since they are focussed at REST.
We are currently investigating Prism which strongly leans to using this method when using WCF for front-end development.
Assumption
With regards to this question, you are making a generic assumption that wrapping ADO Entity Framework with a WCF service it will be generic. ADO.Net Data Services is the closest you will get, however the structure of the database will fundamently change the way you interact with it. Going a level higher in a "generic" way would be dangerous, as these 2 technologies, individually or together, are already as generic as possible.
In addition to Data Services (+1), consider RIA Services. It's like a domain-specific version of data services for Silverlight or WPF clients. Less flexible, but easier, than Data Services.
I have an asp.net mvc application and now I need to add a web service to go along with it. What is the best solution for this? Just create a new web service project and add it to my solution then deploy it to the same web server using a different url? I would like it to be a part of the mvc application only because I have all my database code in there.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
There's no reason not to add a web service project.
You state that all your database code is in your MVC project. I strongly recommend you remove it from there into a separate class library project. This third project would be used both by the web service and by the MVC application.
I also strongly recommend that you not use ASMX web services for any new development.
Use WCF only, unless you have no choice at all. There's a misconception that WCF services don't do SOAP - they do, and WCF has replaced ASMX.
Web service could mean a soap based web service or a RESTful web service. I can't think of any reason why you would not be able to simply add an asmx file to your project and be in business. That is the soap based route. If you want to be really cool though you can simple return xml from a controller action and implement a RESTful solution right over the MVC framework.
If you want to use a regular ASP.NET asmx web service, it's certainly possible. Here's an example from Scott Hanselman that does just what you are asking about and it throws in some other ASP.NET technologies for good measure.
All you have to do is File -> New Item -> Web Service and it should work like a regular ASP.NET application in your Mvc project.
i think there's a couple of things here.
you can indeed add a web service to an MVC application. you may even consider identifying the web service(s) as a script service to make REST like operations easier to perform via javascript. this may not be necessary due to your circumstances.
i think there is a stronger question as to the underlying architecture. If you are placing the web service withing your mvc application, because, your database code is already there...should it be? it might be a good time to abstract your data layer out a little. However, if you're dealing with a relatively small project and don't need the flexibilty, then certainly, add a web service right in. i guess what it really boils down to is addressing the true needs of your application.
MVC is built on the asp.net framework. You should be able to include a web service within the same project. I haven't done it but I know that you can combine asp.net forms applications with MVC applications in the same project. The same should go for web services.
Unless your application is very small I would recommend you create different projects for each logical part of the application. A good staring point is having a project for each of these:
Domain objects
Data access
Web Services
UI (your ASP.NET MVC app)
This provides a clean separation corresponding to your architecture and supports reuse.