Develop Reference

Best way to start Contract First WCF or Web Service?

I've been given a WSDL file and several XSD files to build a web service for. Right now I'm trying to just get it setup to receive requests and respond.
My experience with WebServices is limited to the old asp version with an asmx file etc.
There is a lot of information in the XSD files, I don't want to build out the classes by hand, nor do I really understand exactly what that would entail anyways (I'd imagine just an xml serializable class but haven't looked into it).
Where do I start with this? I looked into WCF but its completely foreign to me so I'd kinda rather use the old style, but I'm struggling to find any info on how to set that up or get a head start with automated generation of classes from the XSD files.
I did try WCF a bit, but WSCF blue gives me errors (Cannot import wsdl:portType) when I try to generate the WebService code. And svcutil.exe will generate some of the XSD file info but not all of them for some reason.
So two questions:
How can I generate some stub classes from XSD files to get this going
A tutorial/walkthrough for generating a WCF service from a WSDL and multiple XSD files that does not use wscf blue?

Assuming you have a WSDL to start with, you can do the following. I did this when tasked with implementing an intermediate dispatch layer on top of an existing web service. The new service should expose the same interface as the original service but perform different functions internally. Note that I am talking about "classical" WCF services here (SOAP-based).
Step 1: Create code for the service interface from the WSDL
wsdl.exe /si /out:<targetfolder> <url-to-wsdl>
This generates a .cs file that contains the interfaces and additional data types (for transfer objects). Note that this file is not WCF-ready yet as wsdl.exe seems to assume you want to create an old .asmx service.
Step 2: Import interface code into your project
Add the generated file to your project. Add attributes for making the interfaces and their operations WCF-ready. You need to add [ServiceContract] to the interfaces and [OperationContract] to the operations.
Step 3: Create the WCF service
Create a WCF service (.svc file) and get rid of the generated interface. Instead, make the service implement the contract(s) from the generated interfaces. Now, you can implement the new functionality.
Step 4: Adjust the remaining binding, authentication settings etc. to match the original web service.

You can use the svcutil.exe to generate proxy .cs classes and app.config files for your client part of the service setup, from the wsdl and xsd files.
Following is a cmd that will will generate a proxy from the visual studio cmd line:
svcutil.exe c:\OutputFolder\ /o:serviceproxy.cs /config:app.config "C:\WSDL And XSD Folder\*.wsdl" "C:\WSDL And XSD Folder\*.xsd"

These might help you get started - if you plan to go the RESTful route:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/571813/A-Beginners-Tutorial-on-Creating-WCF-REST-Services
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb412178.aspx
http://nareshkamuni.blogspot.com/2011/12/window-communication-foundation-wcf-in.html
More in depth - http://www.thatindigogirl.com/ - Michele Leroux Bustamante from a few years ago.
Not so much a walkthrough - but has good info http://rest.elkstein.org/2008/02/what-is-rest.html

Supporting WCF in ASP.NET MVC

I'm trying to make the same project to work with WCF and MVC.
My problem is:
MVC is working perfectly, than I included the interface and the .svc that I had in WCF service.
When I try something like this:
http://localhost:2986/PAGENAME.svc
I get the following error:
The resource cannot be found.
NOTE: PAGENAME.svc is in root (and so as the interface).
Looking forward this problem, I included the ignore methods in RegisterRoutes:
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.svc/{*pathInfo}");
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.svc");
But didn't work either =/
Does anyone know how to fix this?
Thank you!

You need to make sure that you have all the files required, which are referenced from the Service Host (.svc file), i.e.:
<#% ServiceHost Service="..."/>
Where Service specifies the service implementation.
The service contract (the interface that the service implementation implements) is usually configured in web.config.
You don't need to ignore the route if the service host file is at the root of your solution.
You need to reference System.ServiceModel.
If you want to test your service you can by opening visual studio command prompt and running wcftestclient, File -> Add service and add the url for your service, e.g.:
http://locahost:12423/MyService.svc

It's been a while since I've played with this, but I think when using MVC you need to register a service route... but I don't remember if that's what I had to do or if I just wanted to do that for cleaner routes.
To add a service using a service route, you would do something like the following
routes.Add("MyService", new ServiceRoute(
"some/path",
new ServiceHostFactory(),
typeof(MyService)
));

how to pass array from WinForm to WebService

How to pass array from WinForm to WebService?
Can I get any C# sample?

In Visual Studio, simply add a Web Reference or a Service Reference to your WinForm project and it will create the service proxy for you. This assumes that your WebService is exposing a WSDL file that describes the methods and parameters used.

This is a pretty broad question, and it would depend entirely on the type of web service you are looking for. Here are some instructions on how to add a Web Service reference:
Add a link to a web service
Once added, you can call whatever method requires an array and pass in the array through the parameters. A sample instantiation and method call for a web service might look like this:
MyWebService myWebServiceInstance = new MyWebService(url);
string[] params = new string[2];
myWebServiceInstance.CallArrayMethod(params);

If the web service is SOAP based, it should have a WSDL. If so, simply import a service reference to the WSDL and it will set up the proxy for you. Then you create an array and pass it to the method in question.
If you are talking REST based services, I would look at the RestBucks implementation on CodePlex (http://restbucks.codeplex.com/). You will want to look at the client side code. It will show you how to add your "array" in the call body, while setting up header information, etc.
Worst case is going down to a lower level and creating your own Request object. Most likely that would be overkill.

How to override target URI for a web service reference in VS 2008

This seems like it should be really simple, but I'm unable to figure this out.
I am adding a web service reference to my console application. The web service points against our production environment and I would like to test it against development. In VS2005 it was really easy to override the target URI of the service. Is it possible to do the same with VS2008? I would like to set the URI in code or via a config file.
I would really appreciate help with this. Thanks!

If you look in your .config, you should see <endpoint> elements that were added to the <client> section of <system.serviceModel>. Assuming you need to point at only one environment at a time you can simply edit the address attribute of those endpoints to point to whatever URL you want.
If you wanted to change this at runtime you need to use the constructor overload for the client proxy that was created. There should be several overloads that take a parameter called remoteAddress in many forms.

It seems that I was able to get around this issue by going to "Add Service Reference" -> "Advanced" -> "Add Web Reference". This gives me a reference in the form I am most familiar with. Now I was able to override the constructor with the URI parameter. Is that method frowned upon?

WCF and moving the proxy code to a DLL. Is it possible?

it looks like I am not able to succesfully move my WCF proxy code into a separate DLL (as opposed to an EXE as I can see in all the examples I have run into).
The reason I am trying to do this is that I would like my proxy code to be invoked by different clients (possibly unmanaged code), which might not know anything about WCF but just need to access to the services (through a Facade exposed by the proxy maybe?).
Whenever I move the following code that creates a new proxy to a different VS project within the same solution, I get the dreaded "Could not find default endpoint element that references contract 'localhost.IRemoteCommandService' in the ServiceModel client configuration section" exception.
localhost.RemoteCommandServiceClient proxy =
new localhost.RemoteCommandServiceClient();
The same code works smoothly whenever used within a Main method in the same project where the proxy code is (auto-generated from Visual Studio).
Any idea? I hope that the client code of my proxy does not need to have the service model XML configuration as the proxy, because that would defeat the purpose I am moving the WCF proxy code into a DLL in the first place.
Thanks,
Stefano

The endpoints are indeed normally specified in the configuration file. You must look at the serviceModel data in the config file, and copy it into your calling app.config - or you need to use the more verbose way of creating the proxies in your code (i.e. specifying the address, binding, configuration etc through code to the constructors).

If you don't want to have to endpoint configuration on the client, you'll have to embed it into your proxy dll by specifying everything in code.
Another option would be to use a dynamic proxy, like this one, which would allow you to not have the serviceModel in your client apps.