Updating my Model in MVC pattern to WCF REST - Services Layer Implementation

Question

I have a MVC pattern in place where I have been developing WinForms and WebForms against. Now, I would like to move onto Silverlight and thus need to 'web services'-enable my Model layer.

Where do I start? I can't seem to find any good resources. Many talk about EF or ADO.NET Data Services. What do I need to do to my Model layer to enable it for WCF REST?

Answer 1

If you are going to proceed with the technologies you are talking about then forget completely about the term REST. What these technologies allow is you to do is object remoting over HTTP with the HTTP verbs. There is nothing wrong with that, just be aware of what you are trying to achieve.

The more you read and understand about REST the more confused you will get while trying to use Silverlight 3, ADO.Net Data Services, WCF REST Starter kit. These are all fine technologies to achieve what they were designed to do. Unfortunately, you will not learn how to do REST properly from these tools.

If you really want to do REST in .Net then start looking at OpenRasta.

Answer 2

There are many approaches you can take to build your server-side

• ADO.NET Data Services - here is some documentation
• ASP.NET MVC - if you do decide to use ASP.NET MVC, then this tutorial shows you how to access the service from Silverlight. Essentially Tim is showing you how to access the particular REST service exposed by ASP.NET MVC, but the same techniques (WebClient, etc) can be used to talk to any REST service
• Build your own WCF SOAP-based service which implements the MVC pattern. This link shows you how to build and access WCF SOAP-based services in Silverlight.
• Build your own REST service which implements a MVC pattern. There is a universal way to comsume any REST service from Silverlight, which is described here. To build the rest service you can use whatever platform you choose. You may consider the WCF REST support that comes out-of-the-box in .Net 3.5, or the WCF REST Starter Kit, which builds on the out-of-the-box REST support in WCF to give you some extra features. Or you can consider any other REST service framework of your choosing.