DevCenter – The Problem Solver

The basics of building a RESTful service

The term REST originated with Roy Thomas Fielding in his paper on Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures. In this paper he described a way to leverage the basic principles behind the web and apply those to business applications. He argues that the World Wide Web is in fact one of the largest applications used by millions of people every day and one that, despite frequent predictions to the opposite, has managed to scale very well. If the web as we know it is such an immensely scalable and quite reliable application when why don’t we build … Continue reading The basics of building a RESTful service

Using the WCF Web API in an ASP.NET MVC application

By Maurice de Beijer

Warning: This post is based on a prerelease version of the WCF Web API In my previous blog post I showed how to add to and use the new WCF Web API a console application using NuGet. Now that works but it is far more likely that you will want to be using IIS and host the REST service as part of a web application. So in this blog post I am going to show how to do the normal thing I Created an ASP.NET MVC 3 app to host the REST service. Not that there is anything … Continue reading Using the WCF Web API in an ASP.NET MVC application

Adding the WCF Web API to a project

By Maurice de Beijer

Warning: This post is based on a prerelease version of the WCF Web API In my previous blog post I showed how to get started with the new WCF Web API but one thing I skipped is how to install and add it to your project first. So in post I am going to add that information. The easiest way to get started is to use NuGet and add the WCF Web API package to your project. There are several different packages for the WCF Web API but the one named WebApi.All is the easiest to get started … Continue reading Adding the WCF Web API to a project

Getting started with the WCF Web API

By Maurice de Beijer

Warning: This post is based on a prerelease version of the WCF Web API When designing services the REST style is becoming more and more popular. Not that REST is anything new, it has been around for some time. The fact that WCF supports REST services isn’t new either as the WebServiceHost and WebHttpBinding where released with the .NET framework 3.5. However the original REST support in WCF was quite limited. You could build very nice REST services but you had to do a lot of work because out of the box there isn’t support for much functionality. … Continue reading Getting started with the WCF Web API

Keyboard and the Windows Phone 7 emulator

By Maurice de Beijer

By default the WP7 emulator will not react to you typing on the keyboard, instead you have to use the mouse to press keys on the software keyboard that pops up. There is however a hidden feature that will let you use your hardware keyboard, just press Page Up when the software keyboard pops up. And as an extra bonus the three buttons at the bottom of the phone can be activated using F1, F2 and F3 for back, home and search respectively. Cool feature that makes development using the emulator a lot easier Enjoy! [f1] [f2]

Workflow 4 and Visual Basic expressions Survey

By Maurice de Beijer

The topic of Visual Basic expression in Windows Workflow Foundation 4 seems to be a bit of an item for some people as you can see in the comments to my blog posts about it here. Now personally I don’t think it is such a big deal as it only concerns the expressions entered in the workflow, the main project can still be C# if you so desire. Anyway the team responsible at Microsoft have created a survey asking for feedback on the subject. So if you have an opinion, and many seem to, please take 5 minutes go … Continue reading Workflow 4 and Visual Basic expressions Survey

Online presentation: Meet the New Workflow WF4

By Maurice de Beijer

Tomorrow I will be doing an online presentation about Windows Workflow Foundation 4. The meeting lasts 1 hour and starts at 4PM European time, 3PM UTC or 7AM PST. The goal is to provide an overview of WF4 and how to get started with it in Visual Studio 2010. I will be doing the meeting using LiveMeeting and you can register here. During the meeting I will also be tracking the Twitter hash tag #dmwf4 for additional questions and feedback. “See” you there tomorrow [:)] [f1] [f2]

WF4&WCF and message correlation

By Maurice de Beijer

Note: This blog post is written using the .NET framework 4.0 Beta 2 In the previous blog posts, here, here and here, I demonstrated how to use WCF from WF4. This same some more about sending multiple messages to the same workflow, AKA Workflow Correlation. One of the ugly parts of Windows Workflow Foundation 3 was the message correlation part when you used WCF to send multiple messages to the same workflow. When using WF3 you where forced to use one of the context bindings like BasicHttpContextBinding or WSHttpContextBinding. Not only that but you also had to retrieve and … Continue reading WF4&WCF and message correlation

Sending your own objects to a WF4 workflow

By Maurice de Beijer

In the previous two blog posts (here and here) I showed how to create and expose a Windows Workflow Foundation 4 workflow via WCF and have both a workflow and a regular C# client work with it. But the parameter and return value where real simple with just a string each. So how about passing some more complex data. To show how to do so I will replace the singe string with a person object. Admittedly not the most complex person with only an id, first and last name and their birth date but enough to demonstrate the principal. … Continue reading Sending your own objects to a WF4 workflow

Combined DevelopMentor instructors blog feed.

By Maurice de Beijer

Michael Kennedy, one of the co instructors from DevelopMentor, has created a combined feed from all the blogs of the various DevelopMentor. An awesome group of people with a lot of knowledge to share. Highly recommended in you RSS reader. http://feeds.feedburner.com/DevelopmentorInstructors If you want to check out a list of the individual blog feeds look here. Enjoy! [f1] [f2]