I have found some basic information about hosting a WCF service in a Windows service, but not much. All of my experience thus far with WCF has been in Web projects. I have a few simple questions.
I have a project which creates a windows service application. I have done a right click -> add WCF Service. This creates Service1.cs and IService1.cs.
I'm wondering why no SVC file is created in this scenario? When I add services to Web projects i get an SVC file which I can navigate to and use to consume the service.
Adding the service adds some configurations to the app.config under the services element. I'm seeing a default base address of
http://localhost:8732/Design_Time_Addresses/WindowsServiceName.services/WCFServiceName/
What does this mean? It's sort of an odd looking address. Am I supposed to change it to whatever I want?
Navigating to this address in a browser results in an unable to connect message. Does the windows service itself have to be running to talk to the WCF service?
How do I go about consuming this service from another application without an svc file?
I'm taking a guess on this first one, but I'm thinking the .svc file when hosting in IIS is to tell IIS, "Hey I have a WCF service here, please handle accordingly".
The base address is as it should be and yes you can change it if I'm not mistaken.
You can't hit the WCF service unless the Windows service is running, which is one of the dangers of hosting in a Windows service, because if the service dies somehow your WCF service is offline until you get the Windows service running again.
You consume the service the same way you do any other WCF service, just using that base address to get at it.
Related
I've gone through some tutorials on creating a WCF service. I'm using Visual Studio 2012. I got a very simple WCF Service Library (vb.net) and Windows Application (vb.net) communicating via WCF. That's a start.
However, my project requires I do the following:
My Windows Service - This is already an application that has it's tasks.
My Application - This is an application that is already developed as well.
I need the service to talk to the application. The service will need to send the following information to the windows application:
Status Updates
Metric Information (mostly integers for counts)
I need the application to send information to the service. It would need to send:
Reload Configuration command
Should be relatively simple, but I've never worked with WCF until today. So I have some questions...
Do I need to re-work my current windows service into a WCF Service?
Since it won't be in IIS, do I also create a WCF Service Library or do I roll this into the windows service somehow?
What is the best way to set up the different types of communication? (i.e., sending over specific metrics and reload commands)
Probably the main question is what components, in addition to my current windows service and application, will I need to make this work?
I hope that was clear :( I think I'm confusing it all... but I hope not
Your Windows service can host the WCF service. Similarly, if you want, your application can host a WCF service. The application could talk to the WCF service in the Windows Service, and the Windows Service's WCF could talk to the one in the application. Depending on the nature of the communication, you could also just use a callback channel to permit the Windows Service's WCF to call back to the application.
I suppose you should configure your WCF windows service to use named pipes. If your windows service is already built then the easiest way to do it would be to build another one as a WCF windows service and wrap the already existing functionality.
Hope I helped!
I'm developing a webpage that is supposed to consume WCF webserice that is located on client's computer. First, user installs some software that hosts WCF service on his computer, then he'll view my webpage which is supposed to call the WCF service. Do you have any idea how to do it without having to use AtiveX and IE?
Add your wcf service as service reference to your web project. You have to specify the url of your wcf service. A clientproxyclass will be generated for you. In your webpages or whathever you can create a instance of this proxyclass and just code what you want.
I am developing a WCF web service and I used the WCF Service Application template to do that.
Does creating a "WCF Service Application" fulfill this requirement?
What are the advantage of creating a WCF Service Library over a WCF Service Application?
A service application includes a website host already setup for you. A service library is a library of services that a host can reference and startup.
If you start with a service library (recommended) you can then choose any host you wish (a windows service, IIS/ASP.NET, or even a console application) and you'd just reference your library from your new host. Choosing a Service Application limits your host to just IIS/ASP.NET (though this might be ok for your purposes, but will limit the protocols you can use).
Edit: Changes in IIS since I wrote this allow for a wider variety of protocols on ASP.NET activated services, so choosing a service application is much less limiting than before.
If all you have is the one project I see only added complexity if you separate for the heck of it. I used a library when I had some particular use cases where I had to host in both a windows service and in IIS.
For IIS you you can move the classes and interfaces to a library but keep your .SVC files in the web project. You must edit the .SVC files to point to the properly qualified classes.
I created a RoleService in my silverlight project and through that got hold of the embership/Role functionality. I am running this on a local machine and is wondering how to publish this to my website. I have 3 web applications:
My main web application where the silverlight object shoule be merged into
The silverlight project which lets me develop the silverlight application
The silverlight host application which I use for testing
In the web application (1) i have made the RoleService so that i can get a hold on my Roles. In the Silverlight application (2) I have a service reference to the service mentioned above which I consume and loads my Role data. This howecer doesnt work when i publich it online. But how do i get it to work online?
Is it because it is trying to connect to service with wrong address? If so, then you just need to propagate WCF service address to your Silverlight application through hosting web.config and start connecting to a correct service.
Let me know if this is the case, then I will share exact solution for this.
Two weeks ago I needed a way to communicate a wcf service with a windows service running on the same computer. The windows service had to get data from a external source and share it with the wcf service (hosted in IIS) who had to give it when a client made a request. I chose to do that with ipc.
I done it and now the windows service is the ipc server and the wcf service is the ipc client. This goes well but I think I made a mistake doing this because to make it run right the windows service must to be executed with the ASPNET account, for this the ASPNET password account must be assigned and when I do that the IIS does not work correctly.
I am thinking on different alternatives, but in all of them the problem persists. Some ideas?
Edit:
What I needed was a system that made public, in a web service hosted in IIS, data gotten through telnet from another old system, what is a little unstable. How the response of this second system was slow I chose to put a process (the windows service) between the web service and the old system. The windows service had to save the data collected from the old system and when the wcf service asked it give it all at once through ipc.
Why does the windows service need to run as the ASPNET user? Is that because you're using an IPC connection that requires authentication from the caller?
Another alternative (if you have control over the windows-service code) would be to make that a WCF service as well (using a ServiceHost in the windows service). The IIS service could connect to the windows service using a NetTcp or NetNamedPipe binding if you need the IPC-like performance.
Why not just create another account with the same permission set of the ASPNET user which both the WCF service and your other service run under? That way, you have control over the password.
Ideally, the windows service should run as a WCF service, that way its easy for the client to communicate with it.
The next question is weather the 'client' needs to be a WCF service. If this client needs to serve other applications then it is appropriate, otherwise it may not be nessesary. I don't know enough about your system, so its up to you to decide what's best!