{"id":413,"date":"2007-09-12T19:29:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-12T19:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/andrewarnottms\/2007\/09\/12\/calling-wcf-services-from-netcf-3-5-using-compact-wcf-and-netcfsvcutil-exe\/"},"modified":"2019-04-03T22:37:35","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T05:37:35","slug":"calling-wcf-services-from-netcf-3-5-using-compact-wcf-and-netcfsvcutil-exe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/premier-developer\/calling-wcf-services-from-netcf-3-5-using-compact-wcf-and-netcfsvcutil-exe\/","title":{"rendered":"Calling WCF services from NetCF 3.5 using Compact WCF and NetCFSvcUtil.exe"},"content":{"rendered":"

The .NET Compact Framework<\/A> 3.5 adds a subset of the Windows Communication Foundation<\/A> (WCF or “Indigo”) to smart devices, allowing them to communicate with desktop WCF components with all the flexibility of multiple, interchangeable service bindings and endpoints.  Although it ships out of the box only with support for message-level communication (no service calls, per se), we have a code generation tool that will allow you to call WCF or other WSDL-publishing services.<\/P>\n

Desktop has an svcutil.exe<\/A> tool that generates client proxy code, but the source code it generates cannot compile against NetCF libraries because NetCF does not include all the classes referenced from that source code.  While you can modify the code by hand to eventually get it to work with NetCF, we offer an easier way.<\/P>\n

The NetCFSvcUtil.exe tool that ships as part of the Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework 3.5<\/A> supports many of the same command-line switches that svcutil.exe does, but performs a few additional\/modified steps:<\/P>\n

    \n
  1. Verifies that the service being consumed offers endpoints compatible with the feature subset included in NetCF 3.5. \n
  2. Generates the client proxy class in C# or VB that compiles against NetCF or desktop WCF. \n
  3. Generates code for a CFClientBase class that fills in where NetCF doesn’t support calling WCF services. \n
  4. Does not<\/EM> generate a .config file to store the endpoint information.  This information is stored in the client proxy code.  If an X509 certificate required by the endpoint, that must be passed into the proxy class’ constructor by your code.<\/LI><\/OL>\n

    Assuming that you have a service running at http:\/\/localhost\/service\/service.svc on your desktop computer and a device application in your C:\\deviceapp directory, you could generate the code to call the service from NetCF using the following command line.  Be sure NetCFSvcUtil.exe is in your path.  Also be sure to use a machine name that can be reached from your device.  If you use “http:\/\/localhost\/…” as your argument to the tool, your device will look for localhost (which is the device itself!) and not find the service that is running on your Windows box.<\/P>\n

    C:\\deviceapp>netcfsvcutil.exe http:\/\/<machinename>\/service\/service.svc<\/DIV>\n

    The tool will generate and list two source files.  The source file named after your service will be the one that contains the proxy class you’ll use from your app.  You can use it just like you would the svcutil.exe-generated code, except for the provision of secure endpoints made in my numbered list above.<\/P>\n

    To use these source files in your application, add them to your Visual Studio project and be sure you have System.ServiceModel.dll and System.Runtime.Serialization.dll in your project’s Referenced Assemblies list in Solution Explorer.  Calling your service from your device application can be as simple as a couple of lines of code:<\/P>

    CalculatorServiceClient client = new<\/SPAN> CalculatorServiceClient();\nMessageBox.Show(client.Add(3, 5));<\/PRE>\n
    Some features that WSDLs and the desktop .NET WCF supports are not supported by the .NET Compact Framework 3.5.  Although NetCFSvcUtil.exe generates code to enable some of these features, here is a list of features that remain unavailable<\/EM> for our first version of Compact WCF when calling a WCF service on desktop:<\/P>\n