Using WCF Services In ASP.NET MVC 5: Part Seventeen

Before reading this article, I highly recommend reading the previous parts of the series on ASP.NET:

• Getting Started With ASP.NET MVC
• First ASP.NET MVC 5.0 Application
• How to Publish ASP.NET MVC on IIS MVC 5.0: Part 3
• How to Publish ASP.NET MVC 5.0 Application on Windows Azure: Part 4
• ASP.NET MVC 5.0 Views (Dynamic/Strongly Typed Views) - Part 5
• What Are Areas in ASP.NET MVC - Part 6
• Using Partial Views In ASP.NET MVC 5.0: Part 7
• MVC 5.0 Application using Entity Framework DB First Approach: Part 8
• MVC 5.0 Application using Entity Framework Code First Approach: Part 9
• HTML Helpers In ASP.NET MVC 5.0: Part 10
• Using TempData, ViewData and ViewBag in ASP.NET MVC 5.0: Part 11
• Filters in ASP.NET MVC 5.0: Part 12
• Validations In ASP.NET MVC 5.0: Part 13
• Layouts (Master Pages) in ASP.NET MVC 5.0: Part 14
• Facebook Authentication In ASP.NET MVC 5.0: Part 15
• How to Configure Google Sign-In for ASP.NET MVC 5: Part 16

Introduction

The main aim to write this article is that there are lot of articles and samples related to MVC using WCF, but there are not many articles and examples related to MVC and also there is no proper article that shows samples which explain how to display data from SQL Server database to MVC page using WCF. I planned to explain the following using a simple program:

In this article we will see in detail the following:

1. Create first WCF
2. Create Entity Framework
3. Create MVC to display the data from database result to bind in MVC page using WCF
   

PROJECT 1: WCF PROJECT

Step1: Go to Visual Studio 2013 and select "File" and "New Project.

Select "WCF Service Application" in list, then give a name to your project, here I have given it “WcfServiceLibrary1”.

Click on to Ok button to create a new project.

So here your project is created, I need to create a database, so just right click on to “App_Data”, select “Add” and then click on to “New Item”.

I’m going to create a SQL Database, select “Data” in left side of the page and select “SQL Server Database”, give a name to our database and then finally click on to “Add” button.

Open your database by double clicking on your customer database in the App Data folder. Under customer database right click on Table to add a new table.

I have created a table of customers with the following fields as shown in screenshot:

Click on to Update to create a table of customer.

Right click on table to add some data.

Add some data into your table as shown below.

Step2: Go to your project that is WCFLibrary1, right click on to this and select “Add”, then add a New Item.

I need to add an “ADO.Net Entity Data Model”, so select it from menu and click on to “Add” button to add a model, give a name to your model, and finally click on to “Add” button.

Now choose "EF Designer from database”, then click on to next button. We have already created our database.

Now choose your database from the dropdown and click on to “Next” button.

After that your database will retrieve, mark all the items in the table and hit on finish button.

Here you can see that now we have created our Model1.edmx.

Step3: Now, go to the ISevice1.cs file and implement the method declared in the IService1.cs interface.

Delete the already present method in the IService1.cs file and make some changes over here.

And write the following code in the “List<customer>getcustomer()” method.

Service1.SVC: “Service1.svc.cs” implements the IService1 Interface, overrides and defines all the methods of the Operation Contract.

Delete the already present method in the Service1.svc.cs file and also make some changes over there.

And writing the following code, this code retrieves all the data of customer table.

Now run this service, there would be many URLs of different type of files like directory, packages, config, so here click on to “Service1.svc” file.

Then copy the following Url: http://localhost:54232/Service1.svc?singleWsdl

Project 2: MVC PROJECT

Step1: Go to your Solution “WcfServiceLibrary1” right click on to it to add a new project.

In the below figure select “Installed”, Visual C#, then click "ASP.NET Web Application", and here I have given the name of project “wcfusingmvc”, and then click on “OK” button.

You can see the default MVC will be selected, select MVC and then click “OK” button.

Step2: Go to your Solution “wcfusingmvc”, I need to add some references in our solution, so right click on to project and select "Add Service Reference”

Step3: A new window for service reference will open, paste the URL that you copied from the WcfServiceLibrary1 project into the Address Textbox, then click on to "Go", by which a namespace will be added. ServiceReference1 will be added into your project.

Then click OK button.

Now you can see, Service References1 is added in to references.

Step3: Right click on to your MVC Solution “wcfuisngmvc” and add a controller.

Now, select MVC5 Controller-Empty and then click on to Add button.

Give a name to your controller, here I have given it “custController”, click on to add button to add it.

Step4: Right Click on to ServiceReference1 and select “Configure Service Reference”.

Now you can see a window is open, and in this window a checkbox is there which is markable.

Unmark the checkbox and then click on to OK button.

Step5: Now click on to custcontroller.cs controller, there will be Index ActionResult.

You should write the following code in Index method.

Step6: Now create a view for Index, right click on to near Index and add a view.

View Name would be “Index” and select template as a “List”, And after that select your model class Model Class ”customer(wcfusingmvc.ServiceReference1)” from the dropdown menu.

And then click on Add button to add a view.

Now you can see an Index.cshtml view file.

Now all is ready for the use, save your project and run it by pressing F5 key.

Step7: Run the application. In the browser we can see our output that we able to access our database table in to browser with the help of WCF in MVC.

That's all about how to use WCF in MVC.

I hope you enjoyed this article. Stay tuned with me for more articles on all other Microsoft technologies.

Thanks.

Connect (“Nitin Pandit”);

Read more articles on WCF:

• Creating WCF Service For Beginners
• Create WCF RESTful Service With IIS Hosting And Consuming