I have a silverlight business application which access to a web service. I've created WCF service (in RIA part) which access this web service, and then added Web service reference in SL project. Using this way (proxy), I got service address like this: localhost:7777/... When I deployed application to IIS, this port number was not the same (expected, but...).
Since I couldn't configure this port number, I made separate service (not in the same solution) and deployed to IIS. After that, I added service reference to SL project. Similar like before, but now service is not in the same solution, but independently deployed on IIS. This approach doesn't work. In Fiddler all I could see is HTTP 500.
Could someone please tell me how to deploy SL Business Application which has an access to a WCF service which is deployed separately?
Best,
Joksimovic
What you'll want to do is create separate versions of your ServiceReferences.ClientConfig file (which resides in your Silverlight application and contains the service endpoints for the application).
We create a separate ServiceReferences.ClientConfig for each possible deployment location and then base them on the Silverlight project's build configuration. So, when the project is built and it's build configuration is set to "Debug", we have a ServiceReferences.Debug.ClientConfig whose contents are copied into the project's local ServiceReferences.ClientConfig. Ditto for our Test, UAT, and Release builds.
Here is a link which talks about choosing the correct config based on your build configuration: How to use Visual Studio 2010 config transform when running/debugging locally?
Related
I've got a WCF service using the netTcpBinding, and no other binding. It works great when I manually deploy the files to IIS, and my client application can consume the service when I enter the net.tcp://localhost(etc) url. Now I'm trying to get the project to run in Visual Studio, so I can have the service and client in the same solution, and reference the service directly instead of going through IIS, and having to redeploy files manually.
Neither IIS Express nor the Visual Studio Development Server can use net.tcp, so they're out. In the Web tab of my service project, the "Use Local IIS Web Server" or "Use Custom Web Server" looked like good options, but neither of them will accept a URL that doesn't begin with http.
Is there some way of making my WCF service use IIS, and having my client reference the service directly (so that I don't have to deploy files to IIS, and then update service reference, every time I compile)?
Start the service in WcfSvcHost, then try to add a reference to the hosted URL.
Unfortunately, the VS IDE has no technique to start services automatically, except for when you're debugging.
Also, you always need to update service references explicitly. You need to decide which of your changes are ready to be applied to which clients of your service. It would be bad to assume that all clients should be updated as soon as you make a change then compile your service.
You could add a project, which you don't deploy, but only use during development, that self-hosts the service.
I'm new to creating Windows Services to host WCF, as I've been using IIS to do this. I've created a Windows Service to host about a dozen of WCF services, and have set up an app.config file in Visual Studio to handle all the endpoints and addresses for each of the services.
Where on the file system are windows services installed? Is there a way to reconfigure the config file to change bindings/addresses without having to uninstall/reinstall the service?
I've been doing this with the published web.config file that is present in the inetpub for WCF services that are using IIS, I'm wondering if it's the same with a windows service.
The answer to your title question is YES. The app.config to Windows Services is the same as the web.config is to IIS hosted web services.
Windows services are usually deployed as regular executable files in a certain place within a product specific path. The app.config placed next to this executable is with the same name as the executable appended with .config. So a ScanService.exe has a ScanService.exe.config next to it that contains its configuration.
Hans , I have developed/installed my distributed services(.NET remoting) with as windows services, What happens is you need to specify folder while installing the service. eg you select the folder as "C:\Program Files\MyService" then your MyService.exe.config will be installed in same folder as "C:\Program Files\MyService"
so your can find "C:\Program Files\MyService.exe.config" and modify your bindings and then restart your windows service.
Other points you consider is
There will be no AppPool here so what ever account you will use while installing the services will be used to run your services. you may need to provide some additional permissions if you are using simple domain\account
in case you need to access event log or registry via your service.
Or in you can modify your service account later on after installing the services.
Is there any particular reason you want to move away from IIS ? As my WCF services also live in IIS so was wondering if you facing any issues with one.
I have a solution in VS2010 with 3 projects:
WCFServiceLib - a project created with the WCF Service Library template.
ServiceHostConsole - a project created with Console Application template.
ServiceClientConsole - a project created with Console Application template.
The VS template created an app.config in the WCFServiceLib that contains all the settings for the services I want to expose.
The ServiceHostConsole has WCFServiceLib as a reference and hosts the service but does not have it's own app.config file.
If I try to run the host project without an app.config, it fails to host the services, so I moved the app.config from the WCFServiceLib to the ServiceHostConsole.
The ServiceClientConsole has a Service reference to a service inside WCFServiceLib. But once I move the app.config from the Lib project to the Host project, I can no longer Update Service Reference or add new services that I added to the lib project.
In order for the client project to see the service references I have to move the app.config back to the lib project, do the updates/additions to the service references on the client, and then move the app.config back to the host project.
Note that I cannot leave a duplicate app.config file in both the Service Lib project and Host project as this will cause the host to also fail to start. This would be a bad solution anyway as it would create duplicate config in different places. A change to just one of them could create issues that are difficult to track.
It seems very strange that this moving around of the app.config file needs to happen to make things work for both the host and the client, and that they can't both work at the same time.
I'm sure this must be an issue with the way I set things up (although I set them up with the default templates), and I guess there must be a better way to solve this.
This problem becomes very annoying when you are actively developing the services and need to constantly run the host and test the client with the updated services, hence the title of the question:
How do you maintain a WCF Service Library in VS2010 for both a Host and Client projects?
WCF service library creates a config because it is used by a tool called WcfServiceHost.exe. This tool hosts your service if you try to test it without your own hosting application and based on your description it also hosted the service when you added a service reference in the client (because of that you cannot update the reference when you move the config from the library). The config in the library is never used by a hosting application and it doesn't collide with a config used by the hosting application.
A hosting application always needs its own config and there should be no problem to have a config in both the host and the library. You should not create a service reference from the library itself. Once you have your own host use it when you add service reference and maintain only the config in the host.
There is one little problem. To add service reference the service must run. If both the client and the host are part of the same solution you must run the service without debugging (or outside of visual studio) to be able to add service reference to the client.
If I run a WCF application which exposes a service in visual studio, is it possible to consume the service from an asp.net application running on another computer? How can I determine the address of the WSDL published by the WCF service in order to add a reference to it in the ASP.NET application?
If your service is an ASP.NET application and you are hosting it with the built-in development server, refer to Kalus's answer. However, if you have IIS installed locally, you can reconfigure your project settings so that the application is hosted by IIS for debugging instead of the built-in development server.
If you are writing a standalone WinForms or Console application, then the responsibility will be on you to select an endpoint and binding, whereas with an ASP.NET application, those parameters will come from IIS or the Dev server (the protocol will always be HTTP/HTTPS, and the port number will be set by IIS or randomly generated by the Dev server). So in a standalone application, you will have to configure which binding (basicHttp, wsHttp, netTcp, etc.) and an appropriate hosting endpoint (http://hostname/MyService or net.tcp://hostname:port/MyService). But yes, if the service is hosted by a standalone application, it will be accessible from other computers.
Refer to this overview here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms731758.aspx
According to #Kent Boogart's comment below, the asp.net development server can only be used for local requests. So you will need to configure your web service to run in IIS if you want to call it from another machine.
I have created a WCF service library (not a WCF service application).
The project output is a dll.
How can I host this on IIS 7.5/WAS?
I believed that creating a service library was the way to go so that it could be used on a variety of hosts, whereas the service application is limited to IIS.
I'm getting lost in MS mumbo jumbo here, so I'd appreciate any help on getting this service deployed.
Thanks!
Edit
I got the service hosted by following these instructions:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733109.aspx.
It seems like there has to be a better way to host service libraries. Deployment shouldn't require taking settings from app.config and moving them into web.config. Is it standard to wrap them in service applications? Is that even possible?
How are other people handling this?
Yes, creating separate library is good practice because hosting code is not coupled with your services. But you still have to write a host. In WAS, host is in a Web application. To host service in WAS you have to create .svc file and configuration for each service. That is the reason why you have to copy configuration from app.config to web.config. In .NET 4.0 this can be simplyfied with configuration based activation (no .svc is needed) end default endpoints.