Connected Show #38 – WCF? Droid Does!
And, we’re back! It’s been two months since our last show, but the Connected Show is alive and well! Episode #38 is available now!
In an increasingly diverse world of mobile devices, the .NET developer is likely to end up supporting multiple mobile platforms. In this episode, guest Roger Heim joins Peter to talk about connecting .NET & WCF Services with Android clients.
Also, Dmitry unknowingly joins the show with his take on the PDC 2010 announcements. Peter covers the (in)sanity of Silverlight v. HTML5.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN!
Show Notes & Resources For Episode #38
Items Discussed During News & Banter
Silverlight Dead?! Uh… NOT!
- The Future of Silverlight Unveiled: Live Firestarter Event December 2nd 2010
- Extra Extra Silverlight is Dead. What?!
Windows Azure At The PDC 2010
- Windows Azure PDC 2010 Announcements
- What’s New In Windows Azure – Ori Amiga (PDC Video)
- Want To Know More About Windows Azure News From PDC 10? Here’s How! (via Windows Azure Team Blog)
- SQL Azure PDC 2010 Announcements (via SQL Azure Team Blog)
Items Discussed During Interview with Roger
Connect With Roger
Most WCF Services use SOAP & WSDL. There is no native SOAP support in Android. However, 3rd party libraries are available. If you want to consume WCF SOAP-based services, in Android, consider the following library:
- SOAP Library for Android (K-SOAP2-Android) – Project Home On Google Code
- Get the KSOAP2-Android Code HERE From The Main Fork Source Repository
- DON’T GET THE CODE FROM HERE – This Is An Abandoned Fork Of The Project (linked for clarification only!)
WCF Data Services makes it very easy to build data based services on the .NET platform. WCF Data Services uses the oData protocol on the wire. This can be consumed by Android too, via a 3rd party library.
All About oData & AtomPub
Consuming oData (produced by WCF Data Services) From Android
- Restlet – A RESTful Framework for Android and Other Java Implementations That Can Consume OData Services. This provides a nice Java client-side proxy class you can use on Android to talk to an oData service.
- Library To Add JSONP Support to WCF Data Services for “$format=json” – Roger says Restlet works, but can be heavy. Recommends having WCF Data Services return JSON for perf & Android development ease. But you need this library to make it work. This is similar to plain old RESTful WCF, but using WCF Data Services (as a tool) makes it easier/faster to build the services in the first place.
- LINQPad – 3rd Party Tool That Really Helps When Developing and Testing WCF Data Services
Of course, you can also build RESFful services with WCF that return JSON on your own. It seems that’s what others are recommending too.
What Others Are Saying About Consuming WCF From Android
- How To Consume WCF Service with Android (on Stack Overflow) – Stack Overflow consensus seems to be use RESTful WCF services on the server that return JSON.
- Consuming WCF Services with Android (Eddie Lin also recommends RESTFul WCF & JSON approach)
- Get more info on REST in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) on MSDN