Query WCF like standard ASMX web service

Question

I've just recently built a Silverlight application that communicates with a server via WCF. The data we communicate back and forth has been seamless and to be honest, quite easy to implement (w/ SL). Unfortunately, I need the ability to request this same information from the WCF similarly to that of an ASMX web service. Right now, I'm running the service locally (http://localhost/aps.svc) but I'm not able to "Invoke" any of the methods via a web browser (similar to a asmx web service). For example: http://FooBar/Service/servic.aspx?op=GetName would return a name. I need this ability, as our 3rd party software is limited to using web asmx services and I would like to use the WCF already built.

I'm fairly new to WCF and web services in general - so any help would be greatly appreciated!

-Tom

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 14 '10 at 16:22

In order to use your WCF service directly in the browser, you need to switch to a REST-style WCF service.

See the WCF REST Developer Center for a great deal of information on WCF and REST.

Basically, with WCF REST, you can "address" everything in your domain as resources; REST is resource-oriented, while SOAP / ASMX is operation-oriented.

So you probably wouldn't have something like op=GetName in your method, but rather something like:

http://yourserver/YourWCFRESTService.svc/SomeObjectOrResource/Name

and this would return the name "object" of that object or resource, as an XML or JSON stream of data.

Awesome! I'll try this later this afternoon and let you know how it goes. — arctek, Oct 14 '10 at 18:23

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 14 '10 at 16:26

As marc_s mentioned, if you convert or have REST as one endpoint then you may get it to work.

    [OperationContract(Name = "RetrieveUser")]
    [WebGet(ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Xml, UriTemplate = "/{op}")]
    public System.IO.Stream RetrieveUser(String op) { ... }

This may enable you get the operator and then respond correctly.

What I did is to have a controller where the work is done, and my SOAP and REST services just handle getting requests and sending back in the correct format.

Thanks James - I'm going to give these a try this afternoon. I'll let you know how it goes. — arctek, Oct 14 '10 at 18:24

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:33

0

similar to this and this. in short, i don't think it can be done.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:33

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answered Oct 14 '10 at 16:19

vlad

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Query WCF like standard ASMX web service

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