I have an existing application which now has the requirement to be interacted with from a mobile device. The mobile device has a wifi connection, and would be connecting to the PC hosting the main application on a LAN. The mobile device simply needs to add/edit/find/delete objects the main application is maintaining. The main application already encapsulates his functionality in some simple repository classes.
I believe the approach would be to add a WCF service to the main application which exposes a set of methods the mobile device can call against. However I have looked up WCF today and tried to setup an example application, but when called the WCF methods it is unable to access any data, as such I feel the WCF service is running in its own application domain and as such has no access to the same static classes in the main application.
If I setup a WCF service project in VS 2008/2010, how can I run it under the same application domain as the main WinForms application, so that a remote application on the LAN can communicate with it to get data from the application.
Below is my sample WinForm
using System;
using System.ServiceModel;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using DataProject;
namespace WindowsFormsApplication1
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public TestDataProject.DataStore Datastore = TestDataProject.DataStore.GetInstance();
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
Datastore.Add(new MyObj { ID = 1, Data = "hello" });
Datastore.Add(new MyObj { ID = 2, Data = "world" });
Datastore.Add(new MyObj { ID = 3, Data = "item3" });
Datastore.Add(new MyObj { ID = 4, Data = "item4" });
Datastore.Add(new MyObj { ID = 5, Data = "fiver" });
}
}
}
What I need from a WCF service, is access to TestDataProject.DataStore.GetInstance();
Edit
I achieved this by
using System;
using System.ServiceModel;
using System.ServiceModel.Description;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using DataProject;
using TestDataProject;
namespace WindowsFormsApplication1
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public TestDataProject.DataStore Datastore = TestDataProject.DataStore.GetInstance();
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
Datastore.Add(new MyObj { ID = 1, Data = "hello" });
Datastore.Add(new MyObj { ID = 2, Data = "world" });
Datastore.Add(new MyObj { ID = 3, Data = "item3" });
Datastore.Add(new MyObj { ID = 4, Data = "item4" });
Datastore.Add(new MyObj { ID = 5, Data = "fiver" });
ServiceHost host = new ServiceHost(typeof(SimpleService),
new Uri("http://localhost:8001/MetadataSample"));
try
{
// Check to see if the service host already has a ServiceMetadataBehavior
ServiceMetadataBehavior smb = host.Description.Behaviors.Find<ServiceMetadataBehavior>();
// If not, add one
if (smb == null)
smb = new ServiceMetadataBehavior();
smb.HttpGetEnabled = true;
smb.MetadataExporter.PolicyVersion = PolicyVersion.Policy15;
host.Description.Behaviors.Add(smb);
// Add MEX endpoint
host.AddServiceEndpoint(
ServiceMetadataBehavior.MexContractName,
MetadataExchangeBindings.CreateMexHttpBinding(),
"mex"
);
// Add application endpoint
host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(ISimpleService), new WSHttpBinding(), "");
// Open the service host to accept incoming calls
host.Open();
// The service can now be accessed.
Console.WriteLine("The service is ready.");
Console.WriteLine("Press <ENTER> to terminate service.");
Console.WriteLine();
Console.ReadLine();
// Close the ServiceHostBase to shutdown the service.
//host.Close();
}
catch (CommunicationException commProblem)
{
Console.WriteLine("There was a communication problem. " + commProblem.Message);
Console.Read();
}
}
public void Display(string msg)
{
MessageBox.Show(msg);
}
}
[ServiceContract]
public interface ISimpleService
{
[OperationContract]
string Test();
[OperationContract]
string GetOBJDesc(int id);
[OperationContract]
MyObj GetObject(int id);
}
public class SimpleService : ISimpleService
{
#region Implementation of ISimpleService
public string Test()
{
return "Hello world";
}
public string GetOBJDesc(int value)
{
MyObj obj = DataStore.GetInstance().Get(value);
if (obj != null)
{
return obj.Data;
}
return "";
}
public MyObj GetObject(int id)
{
return DataStore.GetInstance().Get(id);
}
#endregion
}
}
With app.config containing
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<system.serviceModel>
<services>
<service name="WindowsFormsApplication1.SimpleService">
</service>
</services>
<behaviors>
<serviceBehaviors>
<behavior name="SimpleServiceBehavior">
<serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="True" policyVersion="Policy15" />
</behavior>
</serviceBehaviors>
</behaviors>
</system.serviceModel>
</configuration>
I could then use WCF Test Client on the url http://localhost:8001/MetadataSample
The main issue I suffered from was my Service starting automatically, this can be disabled in VS2010 by a project setting. And the other issue was UAC, given Visual studio was not set to be a administrator the debugger failed to host a service, this was fixed by adding a WindowsFormApplication1.MANIFEST file containing
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0">”
<trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">”
<security>
<requestedPrivileges>
<requestedExecutionLevel level="requireAdministrator"/>
</requestedPrivileges>
</security>
</trustInfo>
</assembly>
