How to create and consume Web Service in Silverlight?

Working with Services in Silverlight

As we know that Silverlight doesn’t support working directly with ADO.NET, it means you can’t use ADO.NET code like SqlConnection, SqlCommand or SqlDataAdapter to connect to the database and fetch records or manipulate records. So the only option left is to interact with the services (either web or wcf).

NOTE: In case you are creating services in different project than the Silverlight hosting project, you need to specify the client access policy (in the client/consumer project) and cross domain policy (in the server project).

This article is the continuation of my last article in Silverlight controls series, read last article here.

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Client access policy - clientaccesspolicy.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<access-policy>
<cross-domain-access>
<policy>
<allow-from http-request-headers="*">
<domain uri="*" />
</allow-from>
<grant-to>
<resource path="/" include-subpaths="true" />
</grant-to>
</policy>
</cross-domain-access>
</access-policy>

Cross domain policy - crossdomain.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<! DOCTYPE cross-domain-policy SYSTEM "http://www.macromedia.com/xml/dtds/cross-domain-policy.dtd">
<cross-domain-policy>
<allow-http-request-headers-from domain="*" headers="SOAPAction,Content-Type"/>
<!--<allow-http-request-headers-from domain="*" headers="*" secure="true" />-->
</cross-domain-policy>
 

How to create and consume Web Service in Silverlight?

In order to create a web service, right click the project and click on Add New Item … (this project can be the Silverlight hosting project or a separate project altogether). In this demonstration, I am creating my web service in a separate project so we will have to deal with cross domain issue (explained later in this demo).

Look at the picture below to see how to create a Web Service.

Copy-paste following code in the Web Service (assuming your web service name is DemoServices.asmx).

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Services;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
namespace SilverlightWcfService
{
/// <summary>
/// Summary description for DemoServices
/// </summary>
[WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")]
[WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)]
[System.ComponentModel.ToolboxItem(false)]
// To allow this Web Service to be called from script, using ASP.NET AJAX, uncomment the following line.
// [System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService]
public class DemoServices : System.Web.Services.WebService
{
string ConnStr = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["ConnStr"].ConnectionString;
[WebMethod]
public string HelloWorld()
{
return "Hello World";
}
[WebMethod]
public List<Person> GetRecords()
{
List<Person> list = new List<Person>();
using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(ConnStr))
{
using (SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("Select * FROM PersonalDetail", conn))
{
conn.Open();
using (SqlDataReader reader = cmd.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.CloseConnection))
{
while (reader.Read())
{
list.Add(new Person()
{
FirstName = reader.GetString(reader.GetOrdinal("FirstName")),
LastName = reader.GetString(reader.GetOrdinal("LastName")),
Age = reader.GetInt32(reader.GetOrdinal("Age")),
Active = reader.GetBoolean(reader.GetOrdinal("Active"))
});
}
}
}
}
return list;
}
}
}
 

In the above code we are using ADO.NET code to fetch the data from the database and forming a generic collection.

As in this case we are going to return the Generic list collection of Person class so here is the Person class. Note that in order to make this class transferable via Web Services, we will need to set its attribute as Serializable.

[Serializable]
public class Person
{
public string FirstName { get; set; }
public string LastName { get; set; }
public int Age { get; set; }
public bool Active { get; set; }
} 

Browse this service and copy the url.

Now right click the Silverlight application project and click on Add Service Reference …

Enter the url of the service in the Address TextBox and click on Go. You should see your web service in the Services box and methods in Operations box. Enter proper Namespace (in my case DemoServiceReference) and click OK.

You will see a Service Reference folder as well as ServiceReferences.ClientConfig file added into the Silverlight project.

<configuration>
<system.serviceModel>
<bindings>
<basicHttpBinding>
<binding name="DemoServicesSoap" maxBufferSize="2147483647" maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647">
<security mode="None" />
</binding>
</basicHttpBinding>
</bindings>
<client>
<endpoint address="http://localhost:10042/DemoServices.asmx"
binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="DemoServicesSoap"
contract="DemoServiceReference.DemoServicesSoap" name="DemoServicesSoap" />
</client>
</system.serviceModel>
</configuration>
 

Now create a new Silverlight page and paste following code

<StackPanel>
<Button Content="Get Data from Service" Click="Button_Click" />
<sdk:DataGrid x:Name="DataGrid1" />
<TextBlock x:Name="TextBlock1"/>
</StackPanel>
 

In the code behind use the web service namespace (In my case SilverlightDemo.DemoServiceReference ) and write following code.

private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
DemoServicesSoapClient client = new DemoServicesSoapClient();
client.GetRecordsCompleted += new EventHandler<GetRecordsCompletedEventArgs>(client_GetRecordsCompleted);
client.GetRecordsAsync();
}
void client_GetRecordsCompleted(object sender, GetRecordsCompletedEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Error != null)
{
TextBlock1.Text = "Sorry, an error occured. " + e.Error.Message;
}
else
{
DataGrid1.ItemsSource = e.Result;
}
}

In the above code snippet we have instantiated the DemoServiceSoalClient object and attached a method to the web service method event (Our method is GetRecords so its completed event name will be GetRecordsCompleted) and called Async method (in our case GetRecordsAsync method).

In the client_GetRecordsCompleted method that is attached with completed event we are checking for error and if not setting the ItemsSource of the DataGrid to the result of the Web service method.

Output

Hope this article was useful. Thanks for reading and hoping that you liked it.

Keep an eye on forth coming articles on Silverlight. To read my series of articles,click here.

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