Question

Scenario:

I am using Silverlight 3.0 as client for a web service.

Design:

The server has a class named DeviceInfoService which has the basic functionality of getting the list of devices, getting the properties of devices etc.

When I open an ASP.NET project and try to add a web reference, I can find an option to add a "Web Reference". After I add the web reference this way, I am able to access the DeviceInfoService class by creating it’s object and then accessing it’s methods.

Web Reference v/s Service Reference:

Coming to Silverlight: when I try to add a service reference, there is no option to add a web reference. Going with Service Reference, everything works fine till WSDL file is downloaded. People say that I can get this option by going back to .NET 2.0, but probably Silverlight won’t work in .NET 2.0

The Problem

Now when I try to access the class DeviceInfoService , I am not able to find it. All I get is Interfaces — DeviceInfoServiceSoap and DeviceInfoServiceSoapChannel. Classes named DeviceInfoServiceSoapClient.

The methods GetHostedDevices and GetDeviceInfo are no longer available. All I get is GetDeviceInfoRequest, GetDeviceInfoRequestBody, GetDeviceInfoResponse and GetDeviceInfoResponseBody.

I googled a lot how to use these four classes, only to find nothing. I want to get those 2 classes directly like in ASP.NET and not using those Request Response type.

Answer 1

What is web reference in ASP.NET is equivalent to service reference in Silverlight.

Here’s an example of how to use a web service in Silverlight, e.g. the CDYNE Profanity Filter.

Add a new Service Reference to your project, URL is: http://ws.cdyne.com/ProfanityWS/Profanity.asmx?wsdl, leave the name as ServiceReference1.

Use this code behind to call the service (which was implemented to be asynchronous):

public MainPage()
{
    InitializeComponent();

    string badText = "I wonder if the filter will filter this out: shit bad luck";
    ServiceReference1.ProfanitySoapClient client = new ServiceReference1.ProfanitySoapClient();
    client.ProfanityFilterCompleted += new EventHandler<ServiceReference1.ProfanityFilterCompletedEventArgs>(client_ProfanityFilterCompleted);
    client.ProfanityFilterAsync(badText, 0, false);            
}

void client_ProfanityFilterCompleted(object sender, ServiceReference1.ProfanityFilterCompletedEventArgs e)
{
    string cleanText = e.Result.CleanText;  // Web service callback is here
}

And you’ve got a web service up and running in Silverlight!