WCF Service public class available to consuming application - wcf

I am writing a WCF Service and inside the service application have a couple of classes... I want these to be available to the consuming application but it won't actually pass them back as a parameter, rather it will add them into a object array and then pass them back. Seems the only way I can find to make available to .NET App is to have them as a parameter in a service method.
Am I missing something obvious?
Thanks

Found answer, sorry:
add to IService
[ServiceKnownType(typeof())]

Related

How to reference the WCF service by code-behind in UWP?

Now I need to reference a WCF service in a UWP program. However, the address of the WCF service may change frequently in the future.
I don't want to rebuild/republish the project every time when the address change.
So I want to use a LocalSettings to Save/Load the address of WCF service. Every the program begins, it will reload the address from the LocalSettings. And if the address changes, I just only let the customer change the LocalSettings from UI but not need to rebuild/republish the project.
How can I do it? Or there is any other better to do it?
If it's a RESTful service, you could use HttpClient relevant APIs to consume a REST service in UWP.
Please note that REST is a resource that implements a uniform interface using standard HTTP GET, POST, PUT methods that can be located by URI. So, you could use HttpClient to call it in code-behind. You will get response after you send http request, then you could analysis the response result.
The similar thread for your reference: Calling web service asynchronously in page constructor.
Using LocalSettings for such thing is a good solution.
LocalSettings are just a dictionary where you can assign values you want to store and later take out.
ApplicationData.Current.LocalSettings["ServiceAddress"] = "something";
Debug.WriteLine(ApplicationData.Current.LocalSettings["ServiceAddress"]);
Such setting will survive app restart and is stored in applicaton's private storage.
You will probably want to seed this setting with a default value at first startup.

WCF RIA services and WSDL generation

Need help on an issue I am having. I inherited this WCF RIA project and am trying to understand a couple of things.
When I publish the project, how does the WSDL get generated and put on the URL that I published to?
And I want to incorporate FaultException handling so as to transmit the exceptions to the client side. I read some stuff regarding the FaultException on the web and was able to get a small sample working with the regular WCF service.
I thought it would be similar within my actual project. But unfortunately I am running into some issues(probably due to my lack of WCF + RIA services knowledge).
So in my actual project my Context class derives off of LinqToEntitiesDomainService.
I created a new ContextFaultException class which had some methods to capture some custom error messaging.
Then I applied the [FaultContract(typeof(ContextFaultException))] to some of the methods in my Context class. Everything compiles and all is fine. But when I published to a website and then when I added this service reference to the client, I don't see my new ContextFaultException in the Reference.cs file that's generated.
I thought may be moving it within the Context class will solve the issue. So I made my ContextFaultException class as an inner class of this Context class but I am running into some other issues. Before I try to figure out these issues, I just want to know if this the right approach?
Any suggestions/pointers??
TIA
The URL must be formatted to get to the namespace wdsl
for example:
namespace My.Namespace.Services
{
[EnableClientAccess()]
public partial class MyClassName : LinqToEntitiesDomainService<XXX>
{
....
}
}
Then use the following pattern for the url
http://YOURHOST/APP/Services/My-Namespace-Services-MyClassName.svc?wsdl
Use "-" for the "."

Accessing .NET WCF services from Android

I have a .NET WCF service (not a web service) with many methods, some accepting and returning complex data types. I use these services from my Windows Phone 7 apps. It all works great and it's easy.
Now I'm evaluating the feasibility of porting some of my apps to Android, but I can't figure out how to invoke my WCF services from an Android client.
I have a working example I found in Invoke webservices from Android.
But this looks to be accessing a "Web Service", not a WCF Service.
My service is at http://www.deanblakely.com/Service2.svc, and it contains a simple method named "SimpleTest" that just returns the string "Alive".
Using the code in the linked article, I put http://www.deanblakely.com/Service2.svc in SOAP_ADDRESS and SimpleTest in OPERATION_NAME. But I have no idea what to put in SOAP_ACTION and WSDL_TARGET_NAMESPACE. I don't even know if this approach is valid.
In .NET, Visual Studio builds us a "Service Reference" and everything just works.
I also don't understand the following two lines of code...
httpTransport.call(SOAP_ACTION, envelope);
Object response = envelope.getResponse();
With WCF services, the call is async so we make the call to SimpleTestAsync and leave a callback for the async return. These two lines of code appear to be synchronous, no?
When communicating with WCF services from a non-Windows client, you are basically treating it as an XML Web Service. If you configure your WCF service to use a basicHttp binding, it will act just like any other web service, as far as Java is concerned.
Normally, to call a WCF service from Java, you use wsimport to create a custom set of proxy and data classes, similar to the way a service reference works. Android doesn't have all the libraries needed for those classes, but I did find this URL:
http://code.google.com/p/androidclientgenerator-wsimport/
That is a proxy class generator specifically for Android. Instead of using the code on that web page, you may want to download this proxy generator; you simply have to pass it the URL to your service's WSDL page and it will create typed Java classes for everything. If you have complex types being passed back and forth, this is probably a much better option.
However, if you want to continue with the sample code, you'll need to fill in those variables you've identified. The variables are just the typical parameters for a SOAP envelope. These are defined in the WSDL for your service, and are primarily based on the namespace that you have defined for your service. (They are largely independent of the actual URL that your service lives at, with one exception). You specify the namespace in the WCF service contract:
[ServiceContract(Namespace = "http://namespaces.deanblakely.com/wcf")]
Note that the namespace URL doesn't need to point to a real resource, though frequently they do. It doesn't even need to be a URL (I often use urns); it just needs to be a unique string of characters. For now lets assume you assigned the above namespace to your service.
The WSDL_TARGET_NAMESPACE is just the namespace, exactly as above. The OPERATION_NAME is the name of the method you want to call, for example SimpleTest. The SOAP_ACTION is the combination of namespace an operation; in your case that would be http://namespaces.deanblakely.com/wcf/SimpleTest. In your WSDL you would see this described in an operation tag:
<wsdl:operation name="SimpleTest">
<soap:operation soapAction="http://namespaces.deanblakely.com/wcf/SimpleTest" style="document"/>
The SOAP_ADDRESS is the only one that actually points to your service file, e.g. http://www.deanblakely.com/Service2.svc.
Hopefully that will get you started calling in to your web service; if not feel free to stop back and get more assistance.
EDIT: Missed the part about async calls.
Yes, the method described on that web page is synchronous. WCF service methods are synchronous by default, with the option to include asynchronous calls when generating a service reference in Visual Studio. wsimport generates async-ready proxies, so using the Android client generate may also help you out in this area.

Passing client context using Unity in WCF service application

I have a WCF service application (actually, it uses WCF Web API preview 5) that intercepts each request and extracts several header values passed from the client. The idea is that the 'interceptor' will extract these values and setup a ClientContext object that is then globally available within the application for the duration of the request. The server is stateless, so the context is per-call.
My problem is that the application uses IoC (Unity) for dependency injection so there is no use of singleton's, etc. Any class that needs to use the context receives it via DI.
So, how do I 'dynamically' create a new context object for each request and make sure that it is used by the container for the duration of that request? I also need to be sure that it is completely thread-safe in that each request is truly using the correct instance.
UPDATE
So I realize as I look into the suggestions below that part of my problem is encapsulation. The idea is that the interface used for the context (IClientContext) contains only read-only properties so that the rest of the application code doesn't have the ability to make changes. (And in a team development environment, if the code allows it, someone will inevitably do it.)
As a result, in my message handler that intercepts the request, I can get an instance of the type implementing the interface from the container but I can't make use of it. I still want to only expose a read-only interface to all other code but need a way to set the property values. Any ideas?
I'm considering implementing two interfaces, one that provides read-only access and one that allows me to initialize the instance. Or casting the resolved object to a type that allows me to set the values. Unfortunately, this isn't fool-proof either but unless someone has a better idea, it might be the best I can do.
Read Andrew Oakley's Blog on WCF specific lifetime managers. He creates a UnityOperationContextLifetimeManager:
we came up with the idea to build a Unity lifetime manager tied to
WCF's OperationContext. That way, our container objects would live
only for the lifetime of the request...
Configure your context class with that lifetime manager and then just resolve it. It should give you an "operation singleton".
Sounds like you need a Unity LifetimeManager. See this SO question or this MSDN article.

Force WCF to call a method on every request before entering actual function

I have a RESTful WCF service with many different functions. For each function I need to call an authentication method that I have written. I can manually call this method on every request but I was looking for a way to force the WCF engine to call this method before these functions are entered. Does anyone know if this is possible?
Cheers
You could use the "Custom Behavior" approach.
You would need to write a Class that implements IDispatchMessageInspector. The following MSDN magazine article gives a nice explanation of this: Extending WCF with Custom Behaviors (link points to Wayback Machine cached copy; downloads likely don't work).
To force WCF REST Service to first call a method especially if it's for authorization
customize/override CheckAccessCore method of System.ServiceModel.ServiceAuthorizationManager
refer: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms731774(v=vs.110).aspx
If it's for authorization, can't you use the built in services?
For instance, there is the PrincipalPermission attribute. Does that help in your case?
You could think about creating a WCF routing service. You would call a fixed endpoint - your authentication method - and then from there on, route your calls to the actual methods, based on some indication in the request.
For .NET 4, the Routing Service functionality will be included into WCF out of the box.
What I don't know is how that all matches REST, though.
I came across this post, while searching for the same thing.None of the answer's were simple/quick solution so if you just want a function to be called before every method then you can do what i just did:
I created a zero argument constructor:
public class myService : ImyService
{
myService ()
{
ConnectToDatabAse();
FunctionYouWantToCallBeforeEveryMethodCall();
//Add here more
}
}