Question

I’m just starting out with WCF web services, and I’m having a really hard time finding a very simple tutorial, so I thought I’d ask some questions here.

Here’s my setup: I have a WPF desktop application that needs to send data over the internet to a web service on our server.

The way I see it, I have at least these four options:

1. I can do New Website –> WCF Service
2. or New Project –> WCF Service Application
3. or I can add a project to my existing WPF desktop app solution for a WCF Service Application
4. or I can add a project for a WCF Service Library

Can anyone tell me which is the best choice, and then maybe point to a tutorial to help me get started along that route?

Answer 1

This is all rather subjective of course

1. WCF Service Website – I avoid anything to do with New Websites. They’re nasty horrible things, which don’t build the way I want and assume everything in a directory belongs to them. There were masses of complaints when MS took away web applications, and they eventually were returned. I’d always recommend avoiding.
2. A WCF service application creates a new solution with a WCF service application in it. (see 3.)
3. This adds a new service application. This contains everything a WCF service needs to run, on a web including a sample SVC file, a sample contract and some preplumbed configuration settings.
4. This is the bare bones, with no hosting application at all, just a sample config, a sample contract and a sample implementation. If you run this it hosts it in the WCF test server.

If you already have a solution for your desktop application then I’d suggest you add a new WCF service application project to your solution and keep everything in one place. You can also set Visual Studio to run both applications when debugging, so you can actually check everything works together.

If you were writing a separate set of services, to be used by multiple client programmes which all exist in separate solutions I’d have option 2, and then option 4 when you want more flexibility such as hosting the services in a command line application or windows service.