Chapter 13 - Programmable Web

The new Web programming capabilities in WCF simplify the building of services for use on the Web. This chapter covers these services, including SOAP, POX, the UriTemplate class, the webHttpBinding binding, configuration-free hosting, and content syndication models.

Summary

The new Web programming capabilities in WCF simplify the building of services for use on the Web. They help Web developers get stuff done quickly in the manner that they wish to build and consume services for the Web. This means providing features that allow developers to work with the Web. The following summarizes those capabilities of WCF for the Web:

• The .NET Framework 3.5 provides a new UriTemplate class that allows for the efficient parsing of URIs based on their path and a query component. The UriTemplate class is used by WCF in its Web programming model calls to services. 
• Information can be exposed with WCF using a variety of serialization formats including SOAP and POX. .NET Framework 3.5 adds support for JSON as a serialization format.
• An additional binding provided by WCF, called the webHttpBinding binding, exposes services using WCF's Web programming model.
• The webHttpBinding binding is used with either the WebHttpBehavior or WebScriptEnablingBehavior endpoint behaviors. The WebHttpBehavior endpoint behavior is used to expose services using POX or JSON. The WebScriptEnablingBehavior endpoint behavior is using JSON with additional support for generating ASP.NET AJAX client proxies.
• WCF provides a new hosting feature called configuration-free hosting. This feature allows services to be hosted in IIS without the need for configuration. Out of the box, WCF provides two classes that support configuration-free hosting: WebServiceHostFactory and WebScriptServiceHostFactory. The WebServiceHostFactory supports configuration-free hosting using the webHttpBinding binding and the WebHttpBehavior endpoint behavior. The WebScriptServiceHostFactory supports configuration-free hosting using the webHttpBinding binding and the WebScriptEnablingBehavior endpoint behavior.
• WCF in .NET Framework 3.5 provides a rich extensible programming model for content syndication found in the System.ServiceModel.Syndication namespace. Support for both RSS and ATOM syndication feeds is included, using the Atom10FeedFormatter and Rss20FeedFormatter classes.