Here in this tutorial, you are going to follow a simple step by step approach to create a WCF Data Service. You need Visual Studio 2010 IDE & SQL Server in your machine as prerequisites for building WCF Data Service. It would be nice if you have the basic .NET knowledge. Let's get started!

Step 1

Open Visual studio 2010 and create a Web -> ASP.NET Web Application with a language of your choice, either C# or VB. I’ve used C# throughout the lesson. The reason why we are creating an ASP.NET Web application is because in order to host and consume the WCF Data Service we need a hosting and client application.

Step 2

Once the application is created, you need a DataModel where it is going to be served. So let’s create a SQL Server database. Right click on the App_Data -> Create SQL Server database and define the schema as below and let’s feed some values into our newly created database table.

Step 3

You have your Database and Table ready, now it’s time for you to create an Entity Data Model. Right click on the project and Add New item -> Select ADO.NET Entity Data Model, a Wizard pops up, proceed further with it. Below screenshots helps you building a Model.

Step 4

Now, you are done with Entity Model and for our Schema structure, this how the Model looks:

Step 5

You are good with our basic implementation in-order to adopt a WCF Data Service into our application. Ready to go. Let’s create a WCF Data Service. Right click on the Project -> Add New Item -> Select WCF Data Service.

Step 6

WCF creates us a basic template code for us to start with.

Step 7

Before moving forward, let us keep our Database Entity name handy. It can be found in Web.Config under Connection String.

Step 8

Here you have replaced the template code with EntityName and Set of rules which decides the rights of access.

Step 9

If you run the application or just hit F5 selecting the WCF Data Service file. It opens up a browser and navigates us to http://localhost:/WCFDataFilename.svc . You can see a XML document with title holds to the Entity Name we created.

Step 10

To get the full database values as a XML model, just postfix the Entity Name with URL. As below:

Step 11

Quite simple right! You do have some syntax approach in accessing the resource via OData. For example, if you need a Single record, access it like below:

HostForLIFE.eu WCF with Free ASP.NET Hosting
Try our WCF with Free ASP.NET Hosting today and your account will be setup soon! You can also take advantage of our Windows & ASP.NET Hosting support with Unlimited Domain, Unlimited Bandwidth, Unlimited Disk Space, etc. You will not be charged a cent for trying our service for the next 3 days. Once your trial period is complete, you decide whether you'd like to continue.

In this tutorial, I will explain to Self Host your WCF Service in a Console Application step by step. In order to host a WCF Service, you  need a managed process, a ServiceHost instance and an endpoint configured forWCF Service. You can host aWCF Service in following different possible ways:

1. Hosting in a Managed Application/ Self Hosting

• Console Application
• Windows/WPF Application
• Windows Service

2.  Hosting on Web Server

• IIS 6.0 (ASP.NET Application supports only HTTP)
• Windows Process Activation Service (WAS) i.e. IIS 7.0 supports HTTP, TCP, NamedPipes, MSMQ

Self Hosting a WCF Service in a console application is comparatively easy as well as flexible because we can achieve the purpose by writing few lines of code.

Step 1

Let’s first Create a Simple WCF Service i.e. a StudentService and then host in a Console application. StudentService having service operation GetStudentInfo that takes StudentId as parameter and returns student name. Open Visual Studio and Create a new Class Library Project, name it as “StudentService” and press “OK” button.

Then, right click on project and Add a new “WCF Service” to this Class Library Project.

It will add Service Contract (IStudentService) and it’s implementation class (StudentService) to class library project. Also, it will add a reference to System.ServiceModel.
Code for IStudentService interface will be as follows:

 [ServiceContract] public interface IStudentService
 {
     [OperationContract]
     string GetStudentInfo(int studentId);
 }
And following is the code for StudentService implementation class:
      public class StudentService : IStudentService
     {
         public string GetStudentInfo(int studentId)
         {
             string studentName = string.Empty;
             switch (studentId)
             {
                 case 1:
                     {
                         studentName = “Your Name”;
                         break;
                     }
                 case 2:
                     {
                         studentName = “Your Name”;
                         break;
                     }
                 default:
                     {
                         studentName = “No student found”;
                         break;
                     }
             }
             return studentName;
         }
     }

Step 2

In order to host this service in Console application, let’s add a new console application project “StudentHost” to this solution.

Your console application will have reference to:

•     StudentService class library
•     System.ServiceModel.

At the start of this WCF Tutorial, we discuss that hosting a WCF service requires a Managed Process (i.e. console application), Service Host (an instance of ServiceHost class) and one or more Service Endpoints. Detailed implementation of Student host application is as follows:

    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            ServiceHost studentServiceHost = null;
            try
            {
                //Base Address for StudentService
                Uri httpBaseAddress = new Uri(“http://localhost:4321/StudentService”);
               
                //Instantiate ServiceHost
                studentServiceHost = new ServiceHost(typeof(StudentService.StudentService),
httpBaseAddress);
 
               //Add Endpoint to Host
                studentServiceHost.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(StudentService.IStudentService),
                                                        new WSHttpBinding(), “”);           
 
               //Metadata Exchange
                ServiceMetadataBehavior serviceBehavior = new ServiceMetadataBehavior();
                serviceBehavior.HttpGetEnabled = true;
                studentServiceHost.Description.Behaviors.Add(serviceBehavior);
 
                //Open
                studentServiceHost.Open();
                Console.WriteLine(“Service is live now at : {0}”, httpBaseAddress);
                Console.ReadKey();               
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                studentServiceHost = null;
                Console.WriteLine(“There is an issue with StudentService” + ex.Message);
            }
        }
    }

Now, simply build the console application and run it after setting as startup project. You will see the following screen that shows our self-hosted WCF Service is running.

HostForLIFE.eu WCF with Free ASP.NET Hosting
Try our WCF with Free ASP.NET Hosting today and your account will be setup soon! You can also take advantage of our Windows & ASP.NET Hosting support with Unlimited Domain, Unlimited Bandwidth, Unlimited Disk Space, etc. You will not be charged a cent for trying our service for the next 3 days. Once your trial period is complete, you decide whether you'd like to continue.

Tracing mechanism in Windows Communication Foundation is based on the classes that resides in System.Diagnostic namespace. Important classes are Trace, TraceSource and TraceListener. For better understanding, i'm gonna explain to you step by step approach in this WCF Tutorial.

Follow these steps to enable tracing in WCF:

Step 1: Configuring WCF to emit tracing information/Define Trace Source

You will have the following options:

1.     System.ServiceModel
2.     System.ServiceModel.MessageLogging
3.     System.ServiceModel.IdentityModel
4.     System.ServiceModel.Activation
5.     System.Runtime.Serialization
6.     System.IO.Log
7.     Cardspace

In configuration file, you need define a source to enable this configuration as follows:

<source name=”System.ServiceModel.MessageLogging”>

Step 2: Setting Tracing Level

We have the following available options:

•     Off
•     Critical
•     Error
•     Warning
•     Information
•     Verbose
•     ActivityTracing
•     All

And we need to set this tracing level to available options other than default OFF.

In configuration file, we can choose above values for switchValue attribute as follows:

<source name=”System.ServiceModel.MessageLogging”
switchValue=”Information”>

Step 3: Configuring a Trace Listener

For configuring a trace listener, we will add following to config file:

           <listeners>
<add name=”messages”
type=”System.Diagnostics.XmlWriterTraceListener”
initializeData=”d:logsmessages.svclog” />
</listeners>

Step 4: Enabling Message Logging

Follow this code below to enable message logging:

<system.serviceModel>
<diagnostics>
<messageLogging
logEntireMessage=”true”
logMalformedMessages=”false”
logMessagesAtServiceLevel=”true”
logMessagesAtTransportLevel=”false”
maxMessagesToLog=”3000″
maxSizeOfMessageToLog=”2000″/>
</diagnostics>
</system.serviceModel>

NOTES:

logEntireMessage: By default, only the message header is logged but if we set it to true, entire message including message header as well as body will be logged.
logMalformedMessages: this option log messages those are rejected by WCF stack at any stage are known as malformed messages.
logMessagesAtServiceLevel: messages those are about to enter or leave user code.
logMessagesAtTransportLevel: messages those are about to encode or decode.
maxMessagesToLog: maximum quota for messages. Default value is 10000.
maxSizeOfMessageToLog: message size in bytes.

If you put all of the steps together, configuration file will appear like this:

<system.diagnostics>
    <sources>
      <source name=”System.ServiceModel.MessageLogging”>
        <listeners>
          <add name=”messagelistener”
               type=”System.Diagnostics.XmlWriterTraceListener” initializeData=”d:logsmyMessages.svclog”></add>
        </listeners>
      </source>
    </sources>
  </system.diagnostics>
    <system.serviceModel>
      <diagnostics>
        <messageLogging logEntireMessage=”true”
                        logMessagesAtServiceLevel=”false”
                        logMessagesAtTransportLevel=”false”
                        logMalformedMessages=”true”
                        maxMessagesToLog=”5000″
                        maxSizeOfMessageToLog=”2000″>
        </messageLogging>
      </diagnostics>
    </system.serviceModel>

In this case, information will be buffered and not published to file automatically, So, we can set the autoflush property of the trace under sources as follows:

autoflush =”true” />

HostForLIFE.eu WCF Hosting
HostForLIFE.eu is European Windows Hosting Provider which focuses on Windows Platform only. We deliver on-demand hosting solutions including Shared hosting, Reseller Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Servers, and IT as a Service for companies of all sizes. We have customers from around the globe, spread across every continent. We serve the hosting needs of the business and professional, government and nonprofit, entertainment and personal use market segments.