Contracts
- A contract defines certain aspects of the service such as format & structure of the message etc.
- A contract is an agreement between client & service
- Contract describes the data, punitions their return types, parameters, etc to be communicated with the service
Types of contracts in WCF
WCF supports 5 types of contracts
- Data contracts
- Operation contracts
- Message contracts
- Fault contracts
- Service contracts
Data contract
The data type that a service should be use in metadata to enable others to interoperate with the service/ described as data contract.
- In general, these data contracts are created with in the data contract class by preceding with [data contract] attribute.
- The descriptions of the data types are known as the data contract.
- The types used / described with in the data contract can be used in any part of the messages as parameters / return types tec.
- If the service is using only simple types it is not required to create data contract separately.
Operation contract
An operation contract defines the operations, their parameters & the return types.
- All operations should be preceded with operation contract attribute that are to be used outside the WCF service
- In WCF services the operations can be modeled as taking a single message & returning a single message.
- Message contract:-
- A message contract defines / describes the format of a message.
- Message contract declares whether message elements should go in headers / with in the body etc
- Message contract also describes that what level of security should be applied to which elements of the message.
Fault contract
A fault contract can be associated with service operation to denote errors that can be return
- An operation can have zero% more fault contracts associated with it.
- These errors are soap faults that are modeled as exceptions in the programming model
Service contract
A service contract can be said as the combination of other contracts mentioned above.
- The service contract bundles together multi related operations into a single functional unit.
- A service contract contains internally data contracts, operation contracts, message contracts & fault contracts.
- The service contract can define the settings to be followed at service level
- In most of the cases, the service contract is defined by creating an interface & preceding it with service contract attribute.
- The actual service contract code is resulted by implementing that interface.
- The service contract outlines wheel functionality that end point exposes to the client
Endpoint
An end point is a construct, at which messages are sent/received.
- An endpoint contains a location i.e., an address., a specification of the communication mechanism i.e., binding & definition for set of messages that can be sent / received i.e., contract.
- So, endpoint can be set as combination of ABC’s
- All communication with in the WCF services will occur through the endpoints of the service.
- End points will provide the clients complete access to the functionality that WCF service offers
- A WCF service is exposed to it’s clients as a collection of endpoints.
- A WCF service should contain minimum one endpoint.
Structure of a service with endpoints
An endpoint is defined in a web.confing file by using the 3 attributes address, binding & contract like
<endpoint address = “Value” binding = “Value” contract = “Value”>
</enclpoint>
Message & Message Patterns
A message is a self contained unit of data which contains several parts like body, header, etc.
Message are sent between endpoints of dient & service.
WCF supports following message patterns.
- Simple
- Duplex
- Request – reply
Simplex
This is one way communication from client to service.
In this mechanism / pattern client serds request / message to the service, service consumes that request but doesn’t respond back to the client.
To work / implement this message pattern set “ Is one way” property to “true” along with [operation contract] attribute like,
[operation contract (is one way = true)]
The methods which are following simplex message pattern should not return a value i.e., should not have return type (or) should not contain reference & out parameters. Otherwise, they through an conception “System invalid operation” exception.
Duplex
This is a two way / bidirectional communicate service and service respond to the client by conserve that message.
Client & service will exchange the messages cuing channel
A duplex service contract is a message exchange pull in which both client & service endpoints can semi messages to each other independently.
To implement this message pattern set “I someway property of [operation contract] attribute to “true” create the call back interface that defines the of operations for invoking on the client
Request – Reply
This is the default messaging path followed in WCF.
In this type of pattern client makes a call to service tions & waits for a response from the service
Client request & service response will be through event channels.
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