May, 2010

I recently recorded a Silverlight TV episode where I demoed configuring a RIA Services DomainService to expose SOAP, JSon and OData endpoints. The video went online earlier today and it can be found here.

Oh and be sure to check out for Silverlight TV Episode 28. It’s going to be awesome!! Stay Tuned!

Why would you expose other endpoints?

As you all are aware, RIA Services has a great story OM and  tooling story for Silverlight.What if you want a mobile application talking to a domain service or an Ajax application? There could be various different reasons why one would want to expose a different endpoint. The great thing is that enabling these endpoints requires minimal changes in your application.

What do I need to expose these endpoints?

You will need the following components:-

1. Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Web Developer Express 2010
2. Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2010 (contains WCF RIA Services for Visual Studio 2010)
   • Contains the OData endpoint
3. WCF RIA Services Toolkit for SOAP and JSON endpoints

Creating Endpoints

Creating an OData Endpoint

The OData endpoint support is provided out of the box for you. Here is how you can expose an OData Endpoint.

Creating a new DomainService

1. Create a new or open up an existing RIA Services Project.
2. Right click on the server project and add a new DomainService class (assuming you have a DataModel in your project).
3. When the DomainService Wizard comes up, select the model you want to expose and then check the  “Expose OData Endpoint”
4. Click Ok
5. Now you have a DomainService that exposes 2 endpoints:-
   • Binary
   • Odata

Modifying an existing DomainService to expose an OData Endpoint as well

1. Create a new or open up an existing RIA Services Project.
2. Open up your DomainService
3. Find the query method for your entity type. NOTE: This query method should be parameter less
4. Add the following attribute on that query method [Query(IsDefault=true)]

      1: [Query(IsDefault=true)]

      2:     public IQueryable<Book> GetBooks()

      3:     {

      4:         return this.ObjectContext.Books.OrderBy(b => b.Title);

      5:     }

5. Add a reference to System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Hosting.Odata can be found in Program Files\Microsoft SDK’s\RIA Services
6. Open up the web.config file and add the following section directly under configuration

      1: <configSections>

      2:     <sectionGroup name="system.serviceModel">

      3:       <section name="domainServices"

      4:                type="System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Hosting.DomainServicesSection,

      5:                System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Hosting, 

      6:                Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, 

      7:                PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" 

      8:                allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" 

      9:                requirePermission="false" />

     10:       

     11:     </sectionGroup>

     12:   </configSections>

     13:   

7. Under the System.ServiceModel section add the following

      1: <domainServices>

      2:     <endpoints>

      3:       <add name="OData"

      4:            type="System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Hosting.ODataEndpointFactory, System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Hosting.OData, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" />        

      5:     </endpoints>

      6:   </domainServices>

      7:   

8. Now compile and run the application

NOTE: The ODATA endpoint has very limited support in V1. There is no Update or LINQ query support in this release.