Using Silverlight with a Windows Service – Part 2

In order to get the Silverlight version of the application to work the Windows Service has to be modified so that it can provide the necessary Silverlight clientaccesspolicy.xml file or Flash policy file crossdomain.xml from root domain of the service.

This is accomplished by adding a WebService to the WindowService running on the same port as the existing Data Service and using a URL rewriter to provide the correct xml file to the Silverlight application.

First add empty IWebService.cs and WebService.cs classes.

The IWebService.cs should be replaced with this code:

using System.ServiceModel;
using System.IO;
using System.ServiceModel.Web;

namespace ConsoleApplicationWCF
{
    [ServiceContract]
    public interface IWebServer
    {
        [OperationContract, WebGet(UriTemplate = "ClientAccessPolicy.xml")]
        Stream GetClientAccessPolicy();
    }
}

 

Note: You will need to add a reference to System.ServiceModel.Web which can only be added when the dialog is filtered by .NET 4.0 Framework (and not the Client framework).

The key difference between this interface and the one use for the DataService is the WebGet() that has been added to the Operation Contract and it will invoke the GetClientAccessPolicy() method when a GET request matches the template.  The more typical use of this pattern is to respond to more generic request pattern, however it is ideal for handling the Silverlight request.

http://localhost:1234/clientaccesspolicy.xml

The code to handle the request is also very simple:

using System.IO;
using System.ServiceModel.Web;
using System.Reflection;

namespace ConsoleApplicationWCF
{
    public class WebServer : IWebServer
    {
        public const string AssemblyRootPath = "ConsoleApplicationWCF.";

        public Stream GetClientAccessPolicy()
        {
            WebOperationContext.Current.OutgoingResponse.ContentType = "text/html";
            return Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().

               GetManifestResourceStream(AssemblyRootPath + "ClientAccessPolicy.xml");
        }
    }
}

 

The AssemblyRootPath is the namespace for the application.  This should be ConsoleApplicationWCF but can be confirmed by looking at the Default Namespace in the Projects Properties.

Add the following XML as a ClientAccessPolicy.xml file to the project and make sure that the Build Action for the file is set to ‘Embedded Resource’.  When the project is built the xml file will be built into the binary file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<access-policy>
  <cross-domain-access>
    <policy>
      <allow-from http-request-headers="*">
        <domain uri="*"/>
      </allow-from>
      <grant-to>
        <resource path="/" include-subpaths="true"/>
      </grant-to>
    </policy>
  </cross-domain-access>
</access-policy>

 

When the method is invoked the file data is returned to the caller.

The final part of the process is to create a web server endpoint to handle this contracted request.

   <behaviors>
    <endpointBehaviors>
      <behavior name="WebServerEndpointBehavior">
        <webHttp />
      </behavior>
    </endpointBehaviors>
    <serviceBehaviors>
      <behavior name="WebServerBehavior">
        <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="false" />
        <serviceDebug httpHelpPageEnabled="false" includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" />
      </behavior>
        ...
    </serviceBehaviors>
   </behaviors>

 

Notice that there is an endpointBehaviour and a serviceBehaviour. 

These two behaviours are used in the definition of the WebServer service:

    <service behaviorConfiguration="WebServerBehavior" name="WebServer">
      <endpoint address="" behaviorConfiguration="WebServerEndpointBehavior"
        binding="webHttpBinding" contract="IWebServer">
        <identity>
          <dns value="localhost" />
        </identity>
      </endpoint>
      <host>
        <baseAddresses>
          <add baseAddress="http://localhost:1234/" />
        </baseAddresses>
      </host>
    </service>

 

Notice that the <service> behaviourConfiguration uses the WebServerBehaviour and the <endpoint> behaviourConfiguration uses the WebServerEndpointBehaviour.  I know that this looks simple but it’s driven me mad while configuring WCF previously – the trick I think is to make sure the names are really reflecting the configuration!

The binding for the WebServer is ‘webHttpBinding’ which will respond to the HTTP GET method that Silverlight makes (and notice that the GetClientAccessPolicy() outgoing content type is ‘text/html’

Here is the full service configuration for both the WebService and the DataService:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
  <system.serviceModel>
    <behaviors>
      <endpointBehaviors>
        <behavior name="WebServerEndpointBehavior">
          <webHttp/>
        </behavior>
      </endpointBehaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="WebServerBehavior">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="false"/>
          <serviceDebug httpHelpPageEnabled="false" includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true"/>
        </behavior>
        <behavior name="DataServiceBehavior">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true"/>
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
    <services>
      <service behaviorConfiguration="WebServerBehavior" name="ConsoleApplicationWCF.WebServer">
        <endpoint address="" behaviorConfiguration="WebServerEndpointBehavior" 

             binding="webHttpBinding" contract="ConsoleApplicationWCF.IWebServer">
          <identity>
            <dns value="localhost"/>
          </identity>
        </endpoint>
        <host>
          <baseAddresses>
            <add baseAddress="http://localhost:1234/"/>
          </baseAddresses>
        </host>
      </service>
      <service behaviorConfiguration="DataServiceBehavior" name="ConsoleApplicationWCF.DataService">
        <endpoint address="" binding="basicHttpBinding" contract="ConsoleApplicationWCF.IDataService">
          <identity>
            <dns value="localhost"/>
          </identity>
        </endpoint>
        <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange"/>
        <host>
          <baseAddresses>
            <add baseAddress="http://localhost:1234/DataService"/>
          </baseAddresses>
        </host>
      </service>
    </services>
  </system.serviceModel>
  <startup>
    <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/>
  </startup>
</configuration>

And now when the Silverlight application runs and the button is pressed it will request the client access policy file, validate it and then assuming its all OK will fetch the date and time. Awesome!

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