When and How to Use Dispose and Finalize in C#

When and How to Use Dispose and Finalize in C#

good article

Understanding Service-Oriented Architecture

Understanding Service-Oriented Architecture

good link to read about SOA

Garbage Collection: Automatic Memory Management in the Microsoft .NET Framework

Garbage Collection: Automatic Memory Management in the Microsoft .NET Framework

Garbage collection internals .. which we miss to read

Mitsu's blog : Visual Linq query builder for Linq to Sql: VLinq

Mitsu's blog : Visual Linq query builder for Linq to Sql: VLinq

good application to create linq to sql queries using WPF

Implementing Dynamic Proxy in WCF

This article is based on  Vipul Modi's DynamicProxyFactory , i have made a little modification to the implementation in the code,


If you download & view the sample from here site you'll find out that the method InvokeComplexCalculator has an object of DynamicComplexNumber class created inside.


Consider a scenario where the class object is being passed as a parameter to the InvokeComplexCalculater function and the wsdl url & the service contracts are also dynamic i.e we call different services dynamically which have different service contracts also we have different class objects.


i.e.


as per the sample 



private static void InvokeComplexCalculator(DynamicProxyFactory factory)
        {
            // create the DynamicProxy for the contract IComplexCalculator and perform
            // operations
            Console.WriteLine("Creating DynamicProxy to ComplexCalculator Service");
            DynamicProxy complexCalculatorProxy = factory.CreateProxy("IComplexCalculator");

            // Call the Add service operation.
            DynamicComplexNumber value1 = new DynamicComplexNumber(factory.ProxyAssembly);
            value1.Real = 1; value1.Imaginary = 2;
.....

}

what if we had the DynamicComplexNumber class object being passed as an input parameter

somewhat like this


private static void InvokeComplexCalculator(DynamicComplexNumber dynamicComplexNumber, string serviceWsdlUri, string serviceContractName)
        {

DynamicProxyFactory factory = new DynamicProxyFactory(serviceWsdlUri);
DynamicProxy complexCalculatorProxy = factory.CreateProxy(serviceContractName);
...

}


if we had such a requirement we would have to hardcode the class types which we need to pass as an input parameter, also consider a class object being sent back as a response

for e.g.


    class DynamicComplexNumber : DynamicObject
    {
        const string TypeName = "WcfSamples.DynamicProxy.Example.ComplexNumber";
        const string ImaginaryPropertyName = "Imaginary";
        const string RealPropertyName= "Real";
      
        public static Type GetType(Assembly assembly)
        {
            return assembly.GetType(TypeName, true, true);
        }

        public DynamicComplexNumber(Assembly assembly)
            : this(GetType(assembly))
        {
        }

        public DynamicComplexNumber(Type employeeType)
            : base(employeeType)
        {
            CallConstructor();
        }

        public DynamicComplexNumber(object complexNumber)
            : base(complexNumber)
        {
        }

        public double Imaginary
        {
            get
            {
                return (double)GetProperty(ImaginaryPropertyName);
            }

            set
            {
                SetProperty(ImaginaryPropertyName, value);
            }
        }

        public double Real
        {
            get
            {
                return (double)GetProperty(RealPropertyName);
            }

            set
            {
                SetProperty(RealPropertyName, value);
            }
        }
    }


here we need to re-define all the properties we require

so i came up with a DynamicProxyClass which would inherit from the DynamicObject below is the implementation of this class


    public class DynamicProxyClass : DynamicObject
    {
        public static Type GetType(Assembly assembly, string TypeName)
        {
            return assembly.GetType(TypeName, true, true);
        }

        public DynamicProxyClass(Assembly assembly, string TypeName)
            : this(GetType(assembly, TypeName))
        {
        }

        public DynamicProxyClass(Type employeeType)
            : base(employeeType)
        {
            CallConstructor();
        }

        public DynamicProxyClass(object complexNumber)
            : base(complexNumber)
        {
        }

        public void SetObject(string propertyName, object value)
        {
            base.SetProperty(propertyName, value);
        }

        public object GetObject(string propertyName)
        {
            return base.GetProperty(propertyName);
        }
    }

and now we can have methods defined as below


static void Main(string[] args)
        {

            Request request = new Request();
            request.RequestId = "SomeId";
            Response response = DoSomethingDynamically(request);
            ......


        }


        public static void DoSomethingDynamically(Request request)
        {
            Response response = new Response();
            DynamicProxy proxy = null;
            try
            {
                DynamicProxyFactory factory = new DynamicProxyFactory("http://localhost:8753/SampleService?wsdl");

                proxy = factory.CreateProxy("ISampleService");

                DynamicProxyClass requestProxy = new DynamicProxyClass(factory.ProxyAssembly, request.GetType().ToString());

                    Type requestType = request.GetType();

                    // Set the values from the Request Class to the proxy class
                    foreach (PropertyInfo propertyInfo in requestType.GetProperties())
                    {
                        requestProxy.SetObject(propertyInfo.Name.ToString(), propertyInfo.GetValue(request, null));
                    }
              

                object[] requestObject = new object[]{ requestProxy.ObjectInstance };

                object someResponse =  proxy.CallMethodByName("SomeMethod", requestObject);

                DynamicProxyClass responseProxy = new DynamicProxyClass(someResponse);
// Get the Type of the Proxy Response Class so that we get all the properties
                    // & their values dynamically
                    Type responseProxyType = responseProxy.ObjectInstance.GetType();

                    // Get the type of the response object which we would be sending back
                    // This is done to populate the values into the response object
                    Type responseType = response.GetType();

                    // Set the values from the Dynamic Reponse Class to the Response Class which
                    // we want to send back as a return value
                    foreach (PropertyInfo propertyInfo in responseProxyType.GetProperties())
                    {
                        // Skip the extra properties which are generated dynamically by the Dynamic Proxy Object
                        if (responseType.GetProperty(propertyInfo.Name) != null)
                        {
                            responseType.GetProperty(propertyInfo.Name).SetValue(response,
                                propertyInfo.GetValue(responseProxy.ObjectInstance, null), null);
                        }
                    }
                .............
                }


and below we have our request & response classes defined the normal WCF way


    [DataContract]
    public class Request
    {
        [DataMember]
        public string RequestId { get; set; }
    }


    [DataContract]
    public class AnotherClass : Response
    {
        [DataMember]
        public string SomeOtherProperty { get; set; }
    }

just added a collection object to test the calls are working as expected


    [DataContract]
    public class SampleClass : Response
    {
        [DataMember]
        public string SomeProperty { get; set; }

        [DataMember]
        public List AnotherClass { get; set; }
    }


    [DataContract]
    [KnownType(typeof(AnotherClass))]
    [KnownType(typeof(SampleClass))]
    public class Response
    {
        [DataMember]
        public string SomeResponseString { get; set; }
    }


So this sorted out things for me easily, just thought of sharing my experience with others.

Rock Solid Knowledge

Rock Solid Knowledge

Kool videos here to learn WCF, these also include .net 4.0 WCF features.

The CodeGain : Dynamic Service and End Point Discovery feature of WCF 4.0

The CodeGain : Dynamic Service and End Point Discovery feature of WCF 4.0

Good feature added in WCF 4.0, with this we can change the binding anytime .. without worrying about the client application.

Tuples, Anonymous Types, and Concrete Types.

Tuples, Anonymous Types, and Concrete Types.

Detailed information on Tuples & Anonymous types in .net 4.0, another good link to share

Implementing Model-View-Controller in ASP.NET

Implementing Model-View-Controller in ASP.NET

good source to learn the MVC pattern in .net

10-4 Episode 40: The New WCF Routing Service | 10-4 | Channel 9

10-4 Episode 40: The New WCF Routing Service | 10-4 | Channel 9

more videos on this site, if you want to learn .net 4.0 VS 2010 this is the site you should be starting off with

BCL Team Blog : What's New in the BCL in .NET 4.0 CTP [Justin Van Patten]

BCL Team Blog : What's New in the BCL in .NET 4.0 CTP [Justin Van Patten]

Hosting WCF Service using Transport security with SSL certificates

There are several ways to host a WCF service, we all know that, i came accross a scenario where we had to host the WCF service as a windows service & then enable transport security with secured certificate, we wanted to use the default SSL port i.e. 443; but the difference here was that we didn't have IIS installed on the AWS Instance (a win2k8 box hosted somewhere in cloud), here are some simple steps to enable transport security with SSL enable.

Firstly we create a sample WCF class library & host it as Windows Service using VS.net 2008,

next we modify the config file of the windows service, which should look somewhat like this

In order to test this on a development environment we need to create a temporary self signed certificate, for more info on creating a temporary certificate this msdn article is very helpful.

I used the following command to create a self signed temporary certificate

makecert -sk testRootCA -sky signature -sr localmachine -n "CN=RootTrustedCA" -ss TRUST -r RootTrustedCA.cer

makecert -sk testServer -ss MY -sky exchange -sr localmachine -n "CN=Server" -ic RootTrustedCA.cer -is TRUST

next we need to configure the temporary certificate to the default https port i.e. 443, to achieve this we need to use the httpcfg utility,

now if all goes well, after installing & starting the service we should be able to browse through the service url i.e. https://localhost/SampleService & the wsdl via https://localhost/SampleService?wsdl.

please note that temporary certificates should only be used on development environments & not on production.