WCF - push data from web app to windows form application - wcf

I am not sure though what exactly to ask since im very new to WCF. So I'll try to explain what I am doing. I need to create a web app with textbox and button. On button_click the data in the textbox should be push on a win form app supposedly to be deployed to a client. So what's connecting them is the wcf service. I am not exactly looking for codes as solution rather a theory or what I am missing. Thanks.

The simple method is to have your web site publish the button state and have the clients poll for updates. That is very easy to do with wcf, all you have to think about is security - if any.
The hard way is to let the clients to "sign" up on the wep application and then push the state to the clients. Each client would need its own wcf listening endpoint that can be called from the web application. The implementation is simple enough, but I'll suspect that you will run into issues with connectivity. Do the end user have rights to open ports for listening in windows? If the clients are behind nat-routers can you be sure that you can connect to them?

Related

How to monitor all lync users instant message via C# console application?

I have created UCMA trusted application using C# console application.
I want to monitor all Lync Users instant messaging calls (in one place) as well as store their conversations in the database via this console application.
Is it possible?.
If possible, please give an idea or any url.
UCMA trusted applications will only respond to traffic to the endpoints associated with that application so if you want to monitor all instant message traffic it would be the wrong API.
I would suggest using SIP Application API http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/hh364644(v=office.14).aspx to create a server application. This will also require the use of MSPL documented here
As Dai has asked - is the console application a requirement or will a windows service be ok?
Try our this sample application SipSnoop it basically shows all the metadata passing throught the lync server, you can tweak around it according to your requirement.

Is it possible to create a website with WCF?

Is it possible to create a website (hosted locally on my machine is fine for now) using a WCF Service Application?
By "web site" I mean allow an HTTP call from a web browser to my service and have the service return an HTML page that the browser can then render/display.
I am doing something very similar using a WCF based REST service. I have a WCF service that is accessed only from a web browser to download images. If you browse to 'http://www.MyFooImageService.com/100', it will lookup from the database an image with ID 100 and serve it up to the user. I use it to serve images from WCF service for the purpose of sending (user defined) emails with embedded images.
I used this guide with great results: RESTFUL WCF Service Step-ByStep. Check it out and see if a REST based WCF service is what you are looking for.
No, it doesn't quite work like that. WCF applications are service applications. There is no GUI interface or web interface or any kind of interface at all.
What you do is you create a WCF service that does some sort of function. Lets say you create a method called StoreName that stores your name into a database. Keep it simple. WCF services can be hosted in a variety of ways, depending on how you plan to use it. But to keep it simple, lets say you host the application using IIS.
Now this WCF application has no interface for interacting with it. You need to create an ASP.NET application (or it can be PHP, or jQuery if you prefer). It might have a text box and a submit button. Once the submit button is pushed, the ASP.NET application (or jQuery or PHP) makes an ajax call to your WCF service, passing it in the name as a POST parameter. The WCF service then does the work of storing it in the database. Execution then returns back to your web application.
This is a general overview of how this works. I hope it helps!
A website involves:
1) A user requesting HTML from somewhere
You can proxy pass a simple HTTP Get request to a WCF service hosted in a console app (or hosted in IIS), and configure it to return an HTTP request of content type text/html. Then the user would see a website appear in the browser.
But WCF is not a good fit for this. Especially if it's a simple HTML page. Others have said ASP.NET is better for this. And that's true. But node.js or PHP or pretty much anything that isn't .NET is MUCH better for this.
2) A user uses the web page to interact with server processes
This involves a user clicking a button or moving a mouse, or anything, and then that results in the web page (actually a web app at this point) making AJAX requests to one, or several server(s).
WCF is quite a good fit for this.

Interacting with google chrome browser from WCF service

I have a local WCF service which needs to communicate with a web browser.
It has to do the following
Scroll the page
Add cookies
Open new tabs
Etc.
I thought to use one of those; Chrome, IE, Firefox and create an extension which would forward my WCF messages to a browser.
Have you got any suggestion which browse has a richer API, easier to use, etc.
Edit:
So the scenario is following:
WCF service runs on PC and waits for clients.
A client (which in my case is a mobile device) connects to the service.
A client ask to perform an action on a browser
Message via WCF is forwarded to the browser
I hope this scenario makes sense :)
In general, WCF services provide services that clients consume. It is probably not a good idea at all to try to force a WCF service to attempt to control anything.
WCF services should, in general, know nothing about the clients they serve. So your service should know nothing about a browser at all.
The only scenario that might make any sense to me would be if the service provides some sort controlling information (where to navigate to, which tabs to open, etc) to a client that would then do the actual controlling itself.
Make sense?

Security of WCF endpoints

For the sake of argument, lets say that I've got a basicHttp WCF service. Besides implementing authentication (login/logout methods), what is stopping someone from just cracking open Visual Studio, adding a web reference to my website's service, and then playing playing around with my service? I'm not familiar with a method of stopping someone from doing this. The idea of someone downloading all of my Data/Operation contracts and then start playing around is keeping me up at night, and I like my sleep!
Discoverability is the driving factor behind Web Services and especially SOAs. The ability of anyone at all who can reach the service to pull up the WSDL, generate a proxy in Visual Studio (or some other tool), and start using the service is one of the main reasons to create a web service!
I suppose you could generate all the client proxies and then disable the mex endpoint, but that pretty much cripples WCF, and even then it's only security through obscurity.
If you don't want any miscreant to start hitting your web service then either don't use the basicHttpBinding (which is designed for the express purpose of immediate and anonymous consumption) or host the service on a private network which only trusted clients can reach.
Some form of authentication or encryption is the only thing that can prevent this. You have to distinguish between those you want give access to, and those you don't. Give the ones you want to have access the certificate necessary to do encryption, or the username and password.
Don't give anything to the others.

App to app communication and security

I have client apps that talk to my silverlight application and its web services. So the client app is running on the client machine and making calls directly to the silverlight app running on the machine and also making web service calls.
I want the usernames/password security to be handled by the 3rd party client app.
Any idea how I can do this?
I'd try the Application Scenario's, Guidelines and How Tos sections of this CodePlex Link. You should be able to find a scenario that matches closely to yours and follow the guidelines and configuration to get yourself going.
If I've understood this correctly, the client application would pass a username/password to your silverlight app which would require a wsHttpBinding that has clientCredentials="Username". You would need to be able to authenticate this against a user store configured on your server, for example you could configure a SQL Server provider.
I'm not sure how your 3rd party client app works, but you would require a seperate security configuration for that communication. You could use a less secure binding if the apps were on the same machine and possibly use clientCredentials="Windows"/"None"/"Basic".
Difficult to advise further without knowing your exact situation. What do you have so far?