I have created a WCF service and hosted it through self hosting. This service doesn't have any metada published.
First Question
Can I consume it through Visual Studio, Add Service Reference? Hopefully not.
Can I consume it by creating manual proxy, i.e. ChannelFactory<ServiceContract>....?Hopefully yes.
Now in the second scenario, the client must be .Net, right?
So it implies that, to consume a wcf service on a non-.net platform, we have to expose its metadata?
Can't a WCF service without metadata, consume by Ajax client, or say Java client??
There are 3 options to consume a WCF Service:
If the service exposes a WSDL use "add service reference" from VS (or an equivalent from another platform). Note that if you do not want to expose the WSDL you could expose it just temporarly, save the WSDL in a file, and then send it to user in any platform to generate proxy from it. You can turn off the WSDL immediately after you save it. Also note that even if the WSDL is not exposed still you need to protect the web service from unauthorized access.
If this is a .Net client it can compile with the same Service Contract assembly and use ChannelFactory etc.
Any platform can send raw soap message (e.g. XML) to the service. Of course they need to know what is the right format. A WSDL can help but even without it if they have a working sample they can imitate it.
WCF provides REST (Representational State Transfer) support to consume it by non .NET client like JavaScript (AJAX), java, Objective C, web browser, etc...
Basically WCF REST is exposes methods and transferring data over the HTTP protocol and it supports all HTTP operations (GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE). This feature is making it platform independent as well as it doesn’t require metadata exposed.
Please refere below links to get more about WCF REST:
An Introduction To RESTful Services With WCF
WCF REST Programming Model Overview
WCF Rest vs. WCF SOAP
Create RESTful WCF Service API: Step By Step Guide
What is the relationship between WCF and REST&SOAP? Is WCF based on one of those technologies (REST or SOAP) or it is a separate technology?
WCF is a messaging framework for building distributed systems. Distributed systems is mostly just another word for web services.
What this means is that you can write methods in C# (or any of the .NET languages) and then apply a bunch of configurations to the code that make your code accessible to others and turn your code into a web service.
Those "bunch of configurations" are WCF. WCF allows you to expose your methods to other computers or applications using REST if you set up the WCF configurations around your C# code to expose it as a RESTful service. Or, you can easily take the same C# methods and make them available via the SOAP protocol.
If you have a method called "GetData()", you can set up the WCF configuration to make that method available in a service that is hosted in IIS. When someone calls that service, they can send an HTTP GET request to http://www.yourdomain.com/SomeService/GetData, and the GetData method will receive the message and send back a response. When you make a GET request over HTTP, you're using the REST. REST is pretty much tied to HTTP as the transport protocol. REST also has no standard message format. Whatever you want to send in your HTTP message, and however you want to send it is OK. You can send XML, or JSON, or just plain text. You can use POST, or GET or PUT or any of the HTTP verbs as well.
With SOAP, your messages can be sent to the service using any transport protocol -- you aren't tied to HTTP. SOAP messages are designed to be transport neutral. They are encoded in XML and the XML always has a head and a body node inside of an envelope node. There are lots of web standards around SOAP -- standards for putting security, sessions and other features into the header of the message, for example. Also, with SOAP, you get a WSDL, which I won't go into explaining here, but it makes it a LOT easier for clients to program against. Most programming languages have a method of taking a WSDL and converting it into strongly-typed methods and objects so that your service is easy to call.
REST is very popular on the internet and is as scalable as the internet (i.e. VERY scalable). SOAP is very popular in business-to-business applications.
WCF isn't automatically REST or SOAP, but you can make it that way. What you need here is a tutorial:
WCF
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/406096/A-beginners-tutorial-for-understanding-Windows
REST
http://rest.elkstein.org/
Here's some other interesting stuff:
WCF - REST / SOAP
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh323708(v=vs.100).aspx
WCF and REST
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee391967.aspx
Or you can do a google/bing/metacrawler/altavista search on your own.....
From MSDN
The WCF programming model provides various capabilities, such as SOAP
services, web HTTP services, data services, rich internet application
(RIA) services, and workflow services. SOAP services support
interoperability between systems that are built with Java, other
platforms, and those that use messaging standards that are supported
by Microsoft®. SOAP services also support transports such as HTTP,
TCP, named pipes, and MSMQ. Web HTTP services and data services both
support REST. Web HTTP services enable you to control the service
location, request and response, formats, and protocols. Data services
enable you to expose data models, and data-driven logic as services.
WCF also includes two programming models: The service model and the
channel model. The service model provides a framework for defining
data contracts, service contracts and service behaviors. The channel
model supports specifying formats, transports, and protocols.
Both SOAP and REST services can provide functionality to web
applications, and both can be used to exchange information in the
web's distributed environment. Each one has its own advantages, and
limitations.
Although, this question has got several good answers, just putting in my 2-cents, in an attempt for newbies to WCF vs SOAP vs REST-full services, to make it a bit easier for them to understand.
We get confusions, whether WCF supports both REST and SOAP ? And, normally, we just see generic definitions about SOAP and REST. So , we need something from Microsoft to make us feel the truth : ) So here's a screenshot from Microsoft MSDN :
So, yes, WCF supports both .
In context with OP:
SOAP services: in WCF programming model support interoperability between systems that are built with Java, other
platforms, and those that use messaging standards that are supported
by Microsoft®. These also support transports such as HTTP,
TCP, named pipes, and MSMQ.
Web HTTP services : in WCF programming model supports REST. [Source: MSDN]
I want to host my WCF web service in the public domain (on internet) so that any client application (java, .net etc.) can consume it.
The WSDL will give details of the service (what it offers etc.). But,
How to inform the binding details to the clients?
I want to know how do we inform binding details to the outside world when you are on internet and you do not know who the client will be. WSDL gives the details of the service; similarly what mechanism is there to inform the binding that's required to communicate with the service.
Do I need to stick to some specific bindings when I want to publish my web service over internet where anybody can consume it?
svcutil or Visual Studio (using svcutil in background) will understand binding specification provided by metadata exchange binding (look here)
it wouldn't. If You want Your web service to by used by technologies other than .NET You shouldn't use .NET specific implementations.
basicHttpBinding works with soap 1.1. wsHttpBinding with soap 1.2 and WS-*. You shouldn't use other bindings if you want your web service to be interoperable.
My friend asked to explain me what's the difference between Spring, axis2 and Jersey. Here I listed down a few differences that I'm aware of. Please comment/respond if you know more differences
Spring webservices:
A java web application with a servlet configured in
web.xml(org.springframework.ws.transport.http.MessageDispatcherServlet).
You can use spring annotated POJOs for creating web services
Supports both RESTful and SOAP based web services.
Since it’s a web application you can use http authentication mechanisms
for enabling security
Axis2:
The webservice application is a .aar file that will be deployed in
axis2.war
Use AXIOM for using non-primitive type arguments to web service calls
You can use JSR181 annotations to create webservices
You can use spring-dependency injection using axis2 extensions.
Supports both RESTful and SOAP based web services.
I guess you have to use ws-security implementation for
providing security
to your web services>
They claim hot deployment of webservices works but I haven’t seen
it working.
Jersey:
A regular web application with a servlet configured in web.xml.
Write custom message readers/writers for using
non-primitive type arguments to web
service calls
Since it’s a web application you can use http authentication mechanisms
for enabling security
Supports only RESTful implementation of web services
I have seen hot deployment working may be because it’s a web application
and the container can do hot
deployment
I'm not familiar with Jersey and Axis, but I can tell you something about Spring-WS.
You cannot use Spring-WS for restful webservices. Spring-WS is intended to be used for contract first webservices. You can however use the features of Spring 3.x and Spring-MVC for REST services.
As for authorization, you can easily wire in any sort of security (with Spring-Security for instance).
I'm a big fan of the 'automatic' (de) marshalling features of Spring-WS. Just annotate your methods with the correct types and it'll know what to do.
Probably missing something very basic. I created a WCF 4.0 Rest Service. It works no problems when I'm hitting the url from a browser and I'm getting back what I want.
But now I want to use that service from a client mvc application (it will also be used by other non .net platforms which is why it's a rest service in the first place).
Problem is how do I get a service reference to it so I can start to use it in my c# code? With the new minimal WCF .net 4 config approach and no interface for the service contract, I don't know how to specify a mex endpoint. Ultimately I don't want a mex endpoint in production, just during development. I would love to be able to specify that all my services (around 10 in one application) have endpoints with one tiny piece of config that vs2010 .config transformations just rips out when I publish.
Stop. REST service doesn't use metadata. Metadata (Mex endpoint) are only for SOAP services because WSDL 1.1 (the only version supported by WCF) is able to describe only SOAP service. WADL or WSDL 2.0 is able to describe REST service but non of them is currently supported by WCF.
REST service is consumed by using WebRequest directly or by building ChannelFactory on top of shared contracts. Both methods are described here. Other method is to use HttpClient from REST Starter kit (former API). The problem with Starter kit is that it has never reached RTM (it was replaced by WCF 4). Instead of metadata endpoint WCF 4 REST service offers help page where all operation are described. When using WCF 4 REST template the help page should be already turned on - just add /help sufix to address of your service. Here is another article about building REST clients.