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c#wcfassemblies
Nick
Nick

Reputation: 33

WCF - Service Contract from another assembly

I have tried googling for an answer since last week and haven't found anything. Maybe I'm just searching with incorrect key words...

Basically, we have a running WCF service and then we have a separate dll with another ServiceContract in it. We want to know if it is possible to expose the separate dll in the current running service and if one can, how?

We are still new to WCF, so please excuse if this is a stupid question. :(

We are working with .NET 3.5 SP1 and C#.

Regards

EDIT: We want to separate our service into "modules". So the service implementations (Methods, ect) and contracts (Interfaces) are all in separate libraries. So lets say you have a module called "Clients". We want everything related to Clients to be in the same separate library (DLL) instead of one big base class that inherits from multiple interfaces. This is a huge service and we need multiple developers to work on different sections of the same service at the same time. This is what I've been instructed to figure out, but if it can be done then it can't. I hope this makes more sens??

Upvotes: 2

Views: 5603

Answers (3)

Jake
Jake

Reputation: 11430

I guess one work around is you have a main ServiceHost hosting your WCFMainLib and then all your clients will connect to WCFMainLib.

WCFMainLib then acts like a proxy to connect to all other WCFModuleLib on localhost (or other servers) to fetch data.

WCFMainlib will implement the IWCFModuleLib1, IWCFModuleLib2 etc service contract interfaces and expose them to the WCFClient. Actual implementation of interfaces will then be a call to the actual WCFModuleLibs.

This may introduce some overhead, but overall also introduces several "features" that may benefit your boss or service availability.

OR, if you are just wanting to delegate programming work, maybe you can tell each team to work with partial classes for your WCFLib with each service contract on a partial class then do a nightly compile.

Upvotes: 0

Richard Blewett
Richard Blewett

Reputation: 6109

Assuming you are asking how you can implement a service contract declared in one DLL in a service running in a separate DLL/Application:

Edits to match post edits

  1. add a reference to the DLL with the service contract to the application containing the service
  2. In the .cs file with service implmentation add a using statement for the namespace of the service contract
  3. derive the service from the service contract (you will have problems if you define your service contracts as concrete classes rather than interfaces and you want to expose multiple contracts on your service
  4. If self hosting then create a ServiceHost passing the type object of the service in the other assembly, if IIS hosting create an .svc file referencing the class in the other assembly as the service
  5. Add a service element in the config file naming the fully qualified name of the service
  6. Add an endpoint to the service at a unique address for the new contract

Upvotes: 5

Youp Bernoulli
Youp Bernoulli

Reputation: 5635

When you take the other assembly (dll) as a reference in the "main" project, then add a using directive to the file where the WCF service is instantiated. Then you can simply use the referenced service contract to set up a running service with the right endpoints and binding(configuration).

Upvotes: 1

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