Question

I need to get unmanaged Windows C++ clients to talk to a WCF service. C++ clients could be running on Win2000 and later. I have a control over both WCF service and which C++ API is being used. Since it’s for a proprietary application, it is preferable to use Microsoft stuff where possible, definitely not GNU licensed APIs. Those of you who have it working, can you share a step-by-step process how to make it working?

I have researched following options so far:

• WWSAPI – not good, will not work on Win 2000 clients.
• ATL Server, used following guide as a reference. I followed the steps outlined (remove policy refs and flatten WSDL), however the resulting WSDL is still not usable by sproxy

Any more ideas? Please answer only if you actually have it working yourself.

Edit1: I apologize for anyone who I might have confused: what I was looking for was a way to call WCF service from client(s) where no .NET framework is installed, so using .NET-based helper library is not an option, it must be pure unmanaged C++

Answer 1

For those who are interested, I found one semi-working ATL Server solution. Following is the host code, notice it is using BasicHttpBinding, it’s the only one which works with ATL Server:

        var svc =  new Service1();         Uri uri = new Uri('http://localhost:8200/Service1');         ServiceHost host = new ServiceHost(typeof(Service1), uri);          var binding = new BasicHttpBinding();         ServiceEndpoint endpoint = host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IService1), binding, uri);         endpoint.Behaviors.Add(new InlineXsdInWsdlBehavior());          host.Description.Behaviors.Add(new ServiceMetadataBehavior() { HttpGetEnabled = true });         var mex = host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IMetadataExchange), MetadataExchangeBindings.CreateMexHttpBinding(), 'mex');         host.Open();          Console.ReadLine(); 

code for InlineXsdInWsdlBehavior could be found here . One important change needs to be done to the InlineXsdInWsdlBehavior in order for it to work properly with sproxy when complex types are involved. It is caused by the bug in sproxy, which does not properly scope the namespace aliases, so wsdl cannot have repeating namespace aliases or sproxy will crap out. Here’s the functions which needs to change:

    public void ExportEndpoint(WsdlExporter exporter, WsdlEndpointConversionContext context)     {         int tnsCount = 0;          XmlSchemaSet schemaSet = exporter.GeneratedXmlSchemas;          foreach (WsdlDescription wsdl in exporter.GeneratedWsdlDocuments)         {             //             // Recursively find all schemas imported by this wsdl             // and then add them. In the process, remove any             // <xsd:imports/>             //             List<XmlSchema> importsList = new List<XmlSchema>();             foreach (XmlSchema schema in wsdl.Types.Schemas)             {                 AddImportedSchemas(schema, schemaSet, importsList, ref tnsCount);             }             wsdl.Types.Schemas.Clear();             foreach (XmlSchema schema in importsList)             {                 RemoveXsdImports(schema);                 wsdl.Types.Schemas.Add(schema);             }         }     }       private void AddImportedSchemas(XmlSchema schema, XmlSchemaSet schemaSet, List<XmlSchema> importsList, ref int tnsCount)     {         foreach (XmlSchemaImport import in schema.Includes)         {             ICollection realSchemas = schemaSet.Schemas(import.Namespace);             foreach (XmlSchema ixsd in realSchemas)             {                 if (!importsList.Contains(ixsd))                 {                     var new_namespaces = new XmlSerializerNamespaces();                     foreach (var ns in ixsd.Namespaces.ToArray())                     {                         var new_pfx = (ns.Name == 'tns') ? string.Format('tns{0}', tnsCount++) : ns.Name;                         new_namespaces.Add(new_pfx, ns.Namespace);                     }                      ixsd.Namespaces = new_namespaces;                     importsList.Add(ixsd);                     AddImportedSchemas(ixsd, schemaSet, importsList, ref tnsCount);                 }             }         }     } 

Next step is to generate C++ header:

sproxy.exe /wsdl http://localhost:8200/Service1?wsdl 

and then C++ program looks like this:

using namespace Service1;  CoInitializeEx( NULL, COINIT_MULTITHREADED  );  {     CService1T<CSoapWininetClient> cli;     cli.SetUrl( _T('http://localhost:8200/Service1') );      HRESULT hr = cli.HelloWorld(); //todo: analyze hr }  CoUninitialize(); return 0; 

Resulting C++ code handles complex types pretty decently, except that it cannot assign NULL to the objects.