I have developed some MVC applications by using Entity Framework code first approach and now I am developing a new application that will also use web services for mobile applications that we will create. So, I have trouble about the issues below. Could you clarify me please one by one regarding to the issues?
Which web service technology should I use i.e. Web API, WCF, etc? (I am using MVC5 and EF version 6 in my project)
Can I use the same CRUD methods for my web application and for web services? If so, which modifications should be made on the methods and on the other fields i.e. models, etc?
For a current MVC application where EF code first approach was used, is it better to create a new methods for web services or should the current methods be updated by adding ability to support also web services?
Thanks in advance...
I highly recommend to use Commands and Queries. It's covered in this and this articles.
The Command is simple DTO object, and it could be easily sent over the network. In this case you have control over the fields and behaviour you want to make public.
Because commands are simple data containers without behavior, it is
very easy to serialize them (using the XmlSerializer for instance) or
send them over the wire (using WCF for instance), which makes it not
only easy to queue them for later processing, but ot also makes it
very easy to log them in an audit trail- yet another reason to
separate data and behavior. All these features can be added, without
changing a single line of code in the application (except perhaps a
line at the start-up of the application).
Related
I am wondering what is the better way to go. I created a webapi project and am currently working on making my api.
In the future I want a full asp.net mvc 4 website and that could also contain forms to insert data into my database.
I am not sure if I should
a)
Make a new area in my web api project and build my website from there.
b)
Keep it in the same area and just make some new controllers and such in the web api project.
c) add a new asp.net mvc 4 project to my web api solution project.
Definitely two projects. In fact, I'd actually recommend three projects:
MVC website
Class library, for sharing your DAL/Service layers
Web API
Your MVC site shouldn't need to query your Web API, that's just going to create HTTP latency that's unnecessary. Both your MVC site and your Web API, are just "frontends" for your class library. They will both reference the class library and interact with the class library.
A Web API is only necessary if you're trying to provide third-party access or you're interfacing with a project in another language. If everything is .NET then just share the DLLs and call it a day.
K. Scott Allen recently wrote a brilliant post on the Coexistence of ASP.NET MVC and WebAPI it covers the most common scenarios and when it's appropriate to use WebAPI with MVC or when you should just use MVC.
I would use that as your guide pick the solution that best meets your current needs. My advice is to keep it simple and if your requirements are simple then there is no reason not keep WebAPI and MVC in the same project - it works just fine. As your requirements change you can always split them up into different projects or solutions, but by then you will know exactly why you are doing so.
http://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2013/07/01/on-the-coexistence-of-asp-net-mvc-and-webapi.aspx
absolutely,
go through link http://efmvc.codeplex.com/
which is the best architecture to develop the big apps
may this one is help you...
another BEST one MVC N-Tier architecture
MVC ---------> WEB API (services)------ > here BL | DL(ORM) | DB)
which you create this in same solution and build the app...
Separate projects for the web api and the web interface will help split things up, but it does cause duplications. We went that way recently and it works well, but it caused a few problems.
Arguments for having a single project :
Since we don't have a domain name yet, we have our API on the 8080 port. We could use a directory binding to make the API accessible from a sub-directory of the web interface but we were worried about production only bugs about absolute path resolution.
Many settings are shared between the two projects so we have to copy them in both web.config files.
Arguments for having multiple projects :
They are easier to upgrade since they can have different dependencies and they can be built totally independently. For example, our API project uses a few more recent versions of some dependencies.
It forces you to extract all of your business logic into a separate library and makes it easier to think about both projects as separate sub-systems.
It is easier to setup the web interface to a separate machine if the load is too much. This is a concern for us, but that may not be your case.
If I had to make this decision again, I probably wouldn't bother with separate projects unless the system was extremely complex and I needed the additional structure. An argument can be made for both options, but I think the deployment headache it brings is not worth it.
I'm testing ASP.NET MVC 3.
And for an ajax call, I can use a MVC controller Method, or a WCF service.
But why would I use WCF, if I can do it with MVC ?
My questions is : Should I Use WCF services with MVC, or not ? And Why ? And in which case ?
Thanks,
WCF is a framework used for developing web services. The idea of a web service is that it decouples functionality used for providing raw data from functionality used for treating the data and providing it to the end-user. There are a few advantages to this:
If you are providing an API, you don't know how the data will be used. You want to simply provide raw data to a set of applications and let those applications handle the rest. A web service does just that... it opens up the data layer of an application while leaving the rest closed.
It can improve data-layer maintenability by enforcing loose coupling. Loose coupling means that the components of your application are not entwined with one another. This is a good thing because it makes it easier to make modifications to parts of your application without disrupting the rest. For example, if it is understood that a given function call will return a set JSON object, you can make changes to the table structure of the database that provides data for that object without interfering with the code of the consuming application. This works so long as you uphold the predefined data contract by always supplying the same type of data in the same format. On the other hand, if database queries, connection strings and the like are all hardcoded into your application it makes modifying your database logic significantly more difficult.
In your case, if you are just developing a small to medium-sized web application and have no intention of launching an API or similar service, there is probably no need for WCF.
Keep in mind however that while you probably don't need to write a WCF service for your application, you should still try to loosely-couple your application layers as you would with a service. You can do this by splitting data-access code or object (entity) definition code out into separate projecs. Loose coupling, whether it is implemented with WCF or just MVC makes maintaining your project simpler, easier and more affordable and is overall a very good practice to abide by.
MVC is fine, you really don't need WCF for this. MVC creates some sort of REST API (all your action methods get their own URL that you can use to call the method), so you can use that.
I have a very strange situation which I am currently faced with. I have been passed a project to uplift a website to use MVC4 & the enitiy framework. However due to the way that the original implementation was undertaken the database access is not direct from the website it's handed to a separate middle-ware application which we pass the name of a sql transaction we would like to have executed & the required parameters, this then returns us a datatable object.
My Question is this Without having to remove this middle-ware process could I create a MVC4 App with the use of the enitiy framework?
You can certainly create an MVC4 app - you'll just have to create a custom model - but I would suggest that even if using EF is possible, it will be more effort than it is worth, and involve too many compromises and hacks.
[I've never used WCF before. I've been googling for a couple days and haven't found any info that makes my decision of whether or not to use it obvious to me.]
I've been developing a website using ASP.NET MVC, LINQ to SQL, and SQL Server.
Now I want to develop some mobile apps which will be fed data from the site's DB.
It has been suggested to me that I use WCF for this.
I know that if I have data facing the public internet, it can be scraped if someone really wants it, but I'd like to minimize the "scrapablility" of my data.
Since my mobile apps will probably just be sending/receiving data in JSON format, what benefits would I get from using WCF instead of just RESTful JSON-returning URI's in MVC?
And if I do implement WCF, should my MVC site be hitting those services for data also instead of using LINQ in my controllers?
I've got an ASP.NET MVC application hitting WCF. I originally developed it without WCF by having the controllers interact with a service layer that hits my repositories. A requirement came up during development that required me to physically separate the UI from the service layer.
Adding WCF was a pain in the rear. Things that worked without WCF no longer worked afterwards. For example, the state of my entities was lost upon transmission to/from the service layer making it very difficult to utilize certain features of my ORM (NHibernate). I could no longer retrieve an entity, map a viewmodel to the entity in my controller, and allow NHibernate to determine whether or not an update was necessary.
That said, the challenges associated with WCF were mostly incurred at the beginning. I don't need to revisit the configuration very often and I've gotten used to working with detached entities. I also have the benefit of physical separation and WCF is extremely flexible.
Would I use WCF if I needed web services but not the separation? I really don't know. I would probably try to make JSON action methods work because those are much easier (not to mention more fun). Keeping it simple is still a wonderful principle.
As for your MVC site hitting services? I think it's safe to say that your action methods should be very thin and there should be very little business logic or persistence concerns within your MVC project. Separation of Concerns makes it much easier to adapt and change your application.
I don't see any need for WCF. I'd consider an API area, or controller if the API is small, and deliver the data via JSON from a controller action. I'd refactor the app so that the API and your controllers use the same repositories. If you need to retrieve data via AJAX from your views, you can use the API, but I don't see any point in your controllers using them if they can take advantage of the repositories.
I have an architectural question. We have many applications in our company and we are planning to use ASP.NET MVC and Entity Framework in our future projects. The next project that we need to implement is a central authorization/authentication system. There is no option to use an existing one for reasons that doesn't mater right now. This system probably will be structured as a service. What we don't know is: how the other applications will know about "the model" of this authorization/authentication system? I mean, how they will know user, roles, etc. classes? What is the best practice? One of our colleagues suggested to create the entity framework model (.edmx) in a class library. The problem is that in this case we should copy this dll for all projects that will access the authorization/authentication system. Is it a good solution? Does anybody has a better idea?
You can implement your service as a SOAP-based web service, which means your data model and methods will be exposed via SOAP and described using WSDL. The web service can be consumed from any language, without requiring you to distribute any class libraries.
Many languages also have tools which auto-generate client side class wrappers based on WSDL description of your SOAP interface (e.g. wsdl.exe for .NET clients).
Just to add to what DSO already said, the standard way to do this is through the "Add Sevice Reference" dialog box in Visual Studio. It will query your web service, figure out the classes that are needed, and put them in a reference.cs file. You can also use the svcutil.exe (or if you're using Silverlight, SLSvcUtil.exe) to do the same thing. You have to regenerate the reference.cs file every time you change the interface of your web service, but that usually only takes a few seconds.
It's also possible to create a distinct set of Data Transfer Objects that can be shared back-and-forth between the various layers of your application, but unless you have very strong architectural requirements, I've found the auto-generated classes to work reasonably well.
See also this article here about the self-tracking entities available in EF 4.0, if that's an option for you: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee335715.aspx.