Question

I am writing a fairly simple MVC3 application that allows a user to retrieve and modify some configuration data held by a WCF service. The configuration data will not change very often but needs to be maintainable by the user.
Once the user is happy with the configuration, they will launch some processing from the UI or by the scheduled execution of a VB script.

I’m fairly new to WCF and even newer to MVC3 but I’d like to make all the comms to and from the service RESTful. Is this a good thing to do?

I’d been planning to perform the service communications from the MVC controller. This would make a HTTP Get request to retrieve the current configuration and a HTTP Post to apply the modified configuration. I’d also use a Get request to launch the processing.

Could anyone provide an example (or point me in the direction) of how I should be doing this?

Answer 1

The simplest answer I’ve found was here:, using the channel factory.

I still don’t know if it’s the best way but it left my code looking clean enough. Below is a sample from my controller.

    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        SettingsModel config = null;

        // Set up a channel factory to use the webHTTPBinding
        using (WebChannelFactory<IChangeService> serviceChannel = 
            new WebChannelFactory<IChangeService>(new Uri(baseServiceUrl )))
        {
            IChangeService channel = serviceChannel.CreateChannel();
            config = channel.GetSysConfig();
        }

        ViewBag.Message = "Service Configuration";

        return View(config);
    }