I am new to asp.net and just started my first project. I heard about web services in asp.net. Can anyone tell me about how can they benefit me in my websites and applications and can it be run on window applications as well.
The recommended way to write web services in .NET is using the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). There are many tutorials online that will get you started. Here's one on MSDN.
Darin Dimitrov has given you the correct answer. I'll just add that this is a perfect example of the fact that you must be careful about things you read about, or find in Internet searches. There's plenty of bad information along with the good information - plenty of old information along with the current information.
You can find a lot of great information on ASMX web services (sometimes known as "ASP.NET Web Services"), and almost none of that information will tell you that you should not use ASMX web services. Most of that information was written when ASMX web services were the current web service technology, so it will naturally not tell you that it stopped being current three years ago.
Related
I have a small routine that programmatically builds an XML file that resides in memory based on a dataset that I send to the routine (it's called CreateAdXML()).
My buddy says I should turn it into a 'webservice', but I'm not quite sure what he means or how to do that. Can someone offer me some pointers? Is it relatively easy to take existing code for an asp.net site and turn it into a webservice?
There are many possibilities to create web services for an ASP.NET application. It all comes down to what you actually need:
If you need secure connections, advanced serialization, WSDL support etc...
Go for WCF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Communication_Foundation)
MSDN : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/ms735119(v=vs.90).aspx
If you only to expose a few methods:
Go for WebMethods (that's deprecated + quick and dirty in my opinion)
WebMethod tutorial: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/byxd99hx(v=vs.90).aspx
If you need to expose data through a standardized interface, interoperable and bandwith-friendly service (that's called REST):
Go for Web APIs
Official page: http://www.asp.net/web-api
There also a lot of webservices frameworks available on codeplex, do some research to see if one suits your need better. A few well known are RestSharp and ServiceStack.
My advice:
From what you described, I would go with WebMethods for test purposes only. Once you know more about the client that will consume you web service, chose one of the apropriate framework.
If however you need to expose more methods, you should consider using Web APIs or WCF from the start, since these are much cleaner web service frameworks. It will also make you service stack MUCH easier to maintain.
It sounds to me more like you need to make it a utility method instead of a web service, as this will allow all of your web project to use this functionality, but not necessarily expose it beyond the boundaries of your application.
If you insist on making it a web service, then read A Beginner's Tutorial for Understanding Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).
It is fairly easy to create web services from ASP.NET code (VB.NET/C# etc..)
You can use the following link to help you understand more about ASP.NET Web Services.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t745kdsh(v=vs.90).aspx
HOW TO: Write a Simple Web Service by Using Visual C# .NET
But all of the other answers are good too.
I can't find anything on the implementation of service discovery for the ASP.NET Web API. For a new project I need to make a decision between WCF and Web API. The service element will be consumed by a variety of clients, mobile, client-side JavaScript but also an ASP.NET website.
For the website the convenience of being able to generate a client against a WCF service is obviously a plus. I am not that familiar with RESTful web services but I see that there is Web Application Description Language (WADL). Maybe it is my ignorance but surely it is a good thing to be able to advertise the correct way to consume your service?
My main question: is there anything that generates a WADL or similar for WEB API?
Secondary question: this tool looks like it generates a client based on a WADL, is there anything else that makes life easy keeping a client up to date with a RESTful web service?
There is a considerable amount of work going in there. It is not finished but watch the space.
Having a look here (and newer Yao posts):
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/05/21/asp-net-web-api-generating-a-web-api-help-page-using-apiexplorer.aspx
Also
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/06/15/using-apiexplorer-to-export-api-information-to-postman-a-chrome-extension-for-testing-web-apis.aspx
I blogged an approach to generating WADL with ASP.NET Web API here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/stuartleeks/archive/2014/05/20/teaching-asp-net-web-api-to-wadl.aspx
Or is Rails by itself just good for developing APIs?
It seems that ASP.NET Web API project types have some history intertwined with WCF (as is detailed in this post for example), so maybe it's not applicable to Rails.
UPDATE
To clarify, Microsoft has the ASP.NET MVC framework. Recently, they came out with a framework called ASP.NET Web API. ASP.NET Web API seems to have similarities to ASP.NET MVC, but is specialized and trimmed down for RESTful web services. Is there an equivalent in the Ruby/Rails space?
So, the answer is Yes to both questions. Rails does have an equivalent and its Rails.
ASP.NET Web API looks like at it's heart is just a RESTful router with type negotiation. I could be totally off base here, but from the tutorials I saw that's what it looked like to me.
So yes, from what I can tell, Rails supports most of the things that the Web API was created for. In fact in Rails most of this stuff is forced onto you until you become informed enough to be able to change it (assuming by that point you know better than to actually do that).
But, as far as Web API functionality. That really comes from the ability to support HTTP verbs (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) which Rails does.
But a source of confusion might be that in Rails the RESTful API is actually the application itself. Meaning you don't need to implement any other libraries, it's just built that way.
Here's a quick example of that I mean
When you hit /users/1 you will get the data associated with that user depending on the format you requested. So if you request JSON the controller returns JSON, HTML you get HTML, XML you get XML, etc. (As long as said format is implemented for that resource)
A good overview of what I'm talking about are in these two sections:
Rails Guides::Controller: Rendering xml and json data
Rails Guides::Routing: Resources on the Web
So you could build a website, API, or both in a Rails app and they would all start the same way.
But from my limited knowledge on the matter, I would say a ASP.NET MVC with ASP.NET Web API program is actually a lot more like a Rails Program than the regular ASP.NET MVC programs that came before them.
Or it's all just a clever ploy to get as many Capital Letters in a title as humanly possible.
Take a look at grape. It is a pure "Rest" HTTP API framework in ruby.
WSO2 looks like a generic web services framework (as opposed to MVC like Rails) I can't vouch for it but it seems to be more a service framework in the style of WCF Web API (service in the generic sense, not just SOAP).
It's difficult to know what you mean by "APIs"... Rails and ASP are used for developing web sites, and WCF is essentially a web service platform. ASP and WCF have little in common, it's just normal for ASP applications to consume WCF services because they all run on the same stack and platform.
I suppose Rails on the Microsoft side would be a combination of ASP.NET MVC, Linq2SQL or EntityFramework and some WCF.
Ok, this isn't a direct answer to your question, however there seems to be some confusion... Microsoft's ASP.NET Web API is specifically a product offering with ASP.NET MVC 4+. It is a RESTful framework. How does it compare to RoR? I don't know having never tried to install RoR on Windows. As with anything else, experiences vary... Requirements vary. Also try to think ourside the language, construct, context, and framework. Is it better for developing API's? If you're using Linux/Unix, the answer is probably a yes. If you're on a Windows server, the question is a bit trickier.
Finally,
Writing in the ASP.NET Web API will have 0% to do with WCF. Perhaps it is implemented as such under the covers, but the ASP.NET Web API is (from what I've seen and done with it) strictly an HTTP bound API, not TCP/Binary/Piped/etc... like WCF. If you're ask
Yes. It's called Grails. It uses spring. There are tons of plugins available for it and it make creating webapps a breeze. Read more about it here.
I am starting a new project which will need a ASP.NET MVC 2.0 website, a Silverlight section and a Windows Phone 7 UI.
My plan was to use WCF RIA Services to create a set of services which would be used in all different UI projects. With the Silverlight project I would use the standard tool integration, the Windows Phone looks like it may have to be WCF Services exposed by the RIA Domain Services, but I'm not sure about the ASP.NET MVC website.
My initial thoughts I would simple reference the class library containing the Domain Services and use them directly. Could this be considered a viable approach to using RIA Domain Services in a ASP.NET MVC website?
Kind Regards
Michael
I know a long time has passed since this question was asked, but since I had to make such a decision, I might as well document it for the benefit of others.
I work in an environment where lots of legacy and new apps co-exist, with the legacy apps being phased out. So we've had to build interoperability between everything from MS Access, to web service end points in C#, VB, Web Forms, MVC 3, even Flex, Reporting Services...the list goes on.
One of the biggest pain points in a multiple-client scenario is the maintenance of interoperability over time. As data, requirements and delivery mechanisms change, keeping things smooth ends up taking a lot of resources.
My approach has been to create one and only one mechanism for reading a given source of data by defining 1) a model, 2) a serialization/deserialization layer and 3) a service layer. All projects that need to use XY_Data must use the XY_Service to get XY_Objects via the XY_Serializer. Direct db calls or stored procs, etc are allowed in the XY_Application. This allows me to drop in replacement DLLs (versioned) with bug fixes and upgrades without restarting anything. I hardly ever do a full publish.
So yes, what you're suggesting will work. I would recommend only that you rigorously enforce the single-source-of-truth and DRY policies both in your data and your APIs.
Looking into developing new startup with potential of hopefully having high volume.
Initial idea was to straight away have MVC talk to WCF services to create our Application Servers.
However after a little contemplating just wondering what benefits would I gain from using WCF services with MVC application?
If performance became an issue we could just keep adding new front web servers instead of application servers.
Enlighten me please, thanks
Don't start using fancy technology for the sake of using it or because it looks cool on paper. You'll have to support it and sometimes find yourself making things overly complicated because of the introduction of something that might not be necessary.
Said that, my current project also uses MVC 2 in combination with WCF. There it was an architectural decision made before I came to the project as they want to spread the tiers on different servers in different domains (outside and inside DMZ). The WCF service can only be called from the server hosting the MVC application so it should increase security.