I have a server client application.
The clients sends the server http posts with info every second or so.
The server is implemented using C#, there server doesn't need to respond in any way to the client.
Whats the easiest and most practical way to get this done? Is there some kind of library that is easy to use that I can import into my project.
Why not just use a regular old web service? It sounds like you have simple functionality that doesn't need to maintain a connection state. With a web service, you can simply expose the methods to your client, accessible via HTTP/S. If you're already using .NET for your client, you can simply add a web reference to your project and have .NET do the heavy lifting for you. There wouldn't be any need to reinvent the wheel.
You can use http.sys to create your own http listener without IIS or additional overhead. Aaron Skonnard has a good article here.
Because of certain limitations of uhttpsharp (specifically no support for POST forms and file uploads and it using threads to process requests), I've made NHttp available at github which supports full request parsing like ASP.net and processes requests using the asynchronous TCP model.
Related
I'm trying to create a server based around the restful api (basically a client - server system which listens on a specific port but all the tutorials I've seen were using asp.net, some databases or not suited / too complex.
I've tried The Msdn Tutorial, That One CodeProject and That Other CodeProject Tutorial and also haven't found a simple solution here either.
I was thinking of a solution like:
Server listens on specific port for restful requests (Lets call it "ServerListener") and handles the request then in a static "CheckNumber" if its either positive or negative. It'll then reply to the client with the value "positve" or "negative" (depending on its value). The client then shows a MessageBox with the result.
The final idea would be having the server being proxied by an nginx server which handles the the encryption with the client and sanitizing the request.
Please check https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa364510(v=vs.85).aspx
The Http API will give you the freedom to implement your server without Asp.Net, without WCF, and even without IIS.
Check my post, it contains several examples for simple REST server implementations, including C#, Java, PHP and node.js.
I would like to have a client application and web application (or service, no UI) and I would like to connect to said web service from within my desktop application and to have two simultaneous network stream, one of them for uploading data and reading them on server and the other one for sending stuff to the client application.
I am not looking for a solution that uses anything more than that like WCF or anything, I just want a way to create connection between web server and my client application and exchange pure binary data. I would implement the protocol myself, I am not looking for any entities or encapsulation like WCF provides.
I don't even know what project type is the best choice here. I thought about empty ASP.NET application maybe that I'd upload on FTP but I have no idea what I should do next to make the application connectible to. I am not asking for complete solution of course, rather some articles that focus on how to make a plain and simple connection between server and client. I want server to be able to immediately update client and vice versa, that's why I am looking for a way to have stream.
Edit: I may as well say that the service is meant to be placed on ASP.NET hosting and I don't know how ports work on these, if there are any restrictions or anything.
"Web service" and "Network stream" are incompatible concepts. Web-services are (ideally) stateless and disconnected - so they work regardless of how the underlying network works. Messages are exchanged only from client-to-server and are encapsulated in HTTP request/response pairs. Hence "web service".
If you want to exchange "pure binary data" (as you put it) then you just need to work with sockets (or use .NET's TcpClient, which wraps up sockets in an easier-to-use API). ASP.NET would be inappropriate for this.
You can technically have an application that uses sockets that runs within an ASP.NET host process but this might not work depending on how security is set-up and it's also bound by the ASP.NET process lifecycle (so it is activated by IIS and can be shut-down or recycled at any time without warning).
You do not want to use ASP.NET Web Services for this (ASMX). That is a legacy technology, and should not be used for new development.
Why do you not want to use WCF? Do you believe it's too complicated? The thing about WCF is that it removes the complication of creating your own protocols.
Also, which version of .NET are you using? WCF get a lot easier to configure with .NET 4.0.
Here is simple duplex example using WCF.
Try it, check if performance you've got is enough, try to use alternative bindings ( like net.tcp). WCF is really neat tool to use. Once become more familiar with it you will love it.
Also check chapter on bindings in WCF from Learning WCF
Have a look at the MVC4 APIController. It works much like stock MVC except that methods return XML or JSON (or anything else you like).
Eg
/api/Users/Get
would could return something like
{
{"Username":"Bob", "Id":3},
{"Username":"Steve", "Id":4}
}
You can also return files and other streams by using special return types. You even get strongly typed, validated input through the use of models.
There's an example here which shows a full CRUD controller and sample AJAX calls from JS which you can replicate in your desktop app
I have C# apps requesting data from PHP/MySQL API server (Rest/JSON). Now I also need to push messages to the C# apps when some events occur (form submission from the web site). I searched around, and it seems that COMET, long polling, and http streaming are options. Could you please provide some suggestions on which technology makes sense here, as I am not pushing to a web browser?
In addition, if using HTTP streaming (like twitter streaming API), do I need to keep a table of HTTP connections so I know which connection to use when pushing targeted events (only to certain C# clients)? I am a bit confused, and many thanks!
Make a WCF Web Service. http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WCF/WCFWebService.aspx
To connect using PHP: http://weblogs.asp.net/gunnarpeipman/archive/2007/09/17/using-wcf-services-with-php.aspx
In micro-services environment you might want to communicate between more different coding languages in the future, that's why in Kaltura we expose every API with descriptive XML that we can use later to generate client libraries in multiple coding languages, our code generator includes client libraries for C# and PHP.
I also published several REST server examples, including C#.
I'm about to start to develop and application in C# but I realized that I haven't the enough knowledge to develop it yet :S.
The thing's that I need to find out a way to let the Web server comunicate with my application, i.e., in short, is there a way to let the web server (not the Client which is the trivial case) send a messege to a Client application?
I know that I way to solve it's to make Client applications periodically send messages to the web server but that's not what I want 'cause polling generates overhead
Sorry about my english! I'm not a native speaker.
Thanks in advance!
Generally this type of interaction is achieved with Comet or WebSockets - I'm not sure how your app will be communicating with the server, but I would bet you can do what you're trying to do using one of those.
You could implement a WCF service in your client that could listen for a connection from the server (or anything else). The server can communicate with the client as easy as calling the API.
Getting started with WCF is really easy using the wizards in VS.
Here is a link that talks about using WCF with ASP, but it can be used outside of asp as well.
It seems like you meant "push" messaging, the challenge around this is for the server to keep track of the lost of clients and manage who should recieve which message.
If you want to get it done with minimal overhead you can check out the Amazon Simple Notification Service.
SNS is a cloud-based messaging and notification service hosted and managed for you, SNS is based on a topic/subscriber model and you set it up via a few simple API calls, it is metered but quite inexpensive for the most part.
edit: For C# Libraries and frameworks to do it yourself, I am not an expert in the C# world so I think other answerers will know it better.
Disclosure: I work at amazon so I am naturally inclined to like their product
I'd like to write and read TCP Streams directly without any modifications by ASP or IIS. Is this possible?
Edit: Goal is to provide communication between a program and a server. Data exchange between them is less then 25 bytes per connection (in default case). So Headers will cause more traffic then the real data. I need to use ASP.Net because the owner of the server will not let me execute my programs.
ASP.NET even in IIS 7.0 with it's new integrated mode doesn't reveal the underlying socket to your ASP.NET application by default. I'm not sure if there's any hack or third party out there. I think as a web server (IIS 7.0) and web development tool (ASP.NET) using HttpContext and Response objects there are many things you can do like accessing underlying output stream via Response.OutputStream or closing the socket by calling Response.Close() as well.
Sure, try reading this tutorial to give you an outline of using TCP/IP sockets.
ASP.NET is a Web Framework built on the .NET Platform.
What you are asking for doesn't need a Web Framework. You can accomplish everything you need using plain old .NET without using any ASP.NET components.