Using Service Templates with Indigo

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In this sixth part of a ten-part series on the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), aka Indigo, you'll learn how to work with service templates. This article is excerpted from chapter 1 of the book Learning WCF A Hands-on Guide, written by Michele Leroux Bustamante (O'Reilly, 2007; ISBN: 0596101627). Copyright © 2007 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission from the publisher. Available from booksellers or direct from O'Reilly Media.

Service Templates

This lab introduces several Visual Studio templates for generating service code. In an existing project--no matter whether it is a class library, console application, Windows application, or web site--you can add a new WCF Service. This template generates a sample service contract and service type to get you started. If you add the WCF Service to an executable project, the template also supplies a helper class for hosting the service. When you want to create a class library for your services, you can create a WCF Service Library project. This template creates a new class library, including a sample service contract and service type. In this case, the assumption is that you'll create a separate host for the service (my personal preference). Using each of these templates also adds the appropriate service model assembly references to save you the trouble.

Service templates for web sites are slightly different from other projects because the hosting environment is slightly different. The overall result is the same--sample code is generated and assembly references are added. The difference is that an additional file is generated with a .svc extension for web hosting. You'll see this in the next lab.

ServiceModel Metadata Utility

The ServiceModel Metadata Utility is a command-line tool that is installed with the Windows SDK for .NET 3.0--an executable file named svcutil.exe. This tool can be used for two key purposes:

1. To generate code and configuration settings from metadata
   
2. To generate metadata from code and configuration

With SvcUtil you can export and import metadata, validate services, and manipulate how types are generated and shared between services and clients. Add Service Reference uses SvcUtil to generate proxies and configuration, but from the command line, you can exercise greater control over this process.

This lab illustrates a very simple command-line instruction for generating a proxy and configuration file from a metadata exchange endpoint as follows:

  svcutil /d:<YourLearningWCFPath>\Labs\ Chapter1\HelloIndigo\Client  /o:serviceproxy.cs
  /config:app.config http://localhost:8000/HelloIndigo

You can also suppress the generation of configuration output with the following instruction:

  svcutil /d:<YourLearningWCFPath>\Labs\ Chapter1\HelloIndigo\Client  /o:serviceproxy.cs
  /config:noconfig http://localhost:8000/HelloIndigo

To see all the options for SvcUtil, from the command line you can type:

  svcutil /?

Using Add Service Reference to generate the client configuration and proxy will work for many cases, but there are some cases in which you need to exercise control over things such as how arrays are handled, to make asynchronous calls to the proxy, and to share types with the service. I'll explore other uses for SvcUtil throughout this book.

Next: Service Configuration Editor >>
 

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This article is excerpted from chapter 1 of the book Learning WCF A Hands-on Guide, written by Michele Leroux Bustamante (O'Reilly, 2007; ISBN: 0596101627). Check it out today at your favorite bookstore. Buy this book now.