I’m just starting out really with WCF and Web Services in general. I have a pretty firm understanding on the purposes behind them and how they work, but I was wondering what the capabilities with them are if you wished to return something other than Text; such as a straight HTML form, or an image.
I’ve done some simple googling but alas all I can find is how to handle data passed from a form, rather than how to return a form.
I hope someone could give me a good starting point on what I should be looking at. I looked at a thread stating to look at Streaming with WCF but that may seem a bit excessive and was wondering if someone could give me some general advice and input.
Many thanks,
Ronald.
It probably depends on the actual binding but, for the sake of simplicity, assume that you bind your WCF service over http. Then, everything you pass to and from the service should somehow be translated to string. Simple types, ints, doules, strings, are easily convertible. Compound types – also, as they consist of simple types. When it comes to specific types like images or html forms, you always try to find a way to convert them at one side and convert back on the other side. In many cases the serializer can do it for you, for example if you return
byte[], the data will be encoded as base64 string. If the serializer fails for some reason, you have to find your own way to pass your specific types. Please also remember that for WCF, it is you to select a particular serializer:http://nirajrules.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/wcf-serializers-xmlserializer-vs-datacontratserializer-vs-netdatacontractserializer/