Sharepoint 2010 : Creating a Pluggable Workflow Service (part 2) - Add a SharePoint-Hosted WCF Service

Add a SharePoint-Hosted WCF Service

Now that our client WCF service is up and running, our next logical step is to implement a WCF service that can be hosted within SharePoint to receive calculation results from our client application.

1. We’ll make use of the packaging and deployment capabilities of Visual Studio to set up our WCF service on SharePoint. In Visual Studio, choose File | New | Project and then from the New Project dialog, choose SharePoint | 2010 | Empty SharePoint Project. Name the new project WorkflowDemonstration as illustrated.

   

2. Set the local site to use for debugging to the demonstration site that we created earlier: http://localhost/chapter11. We need to deploy as a farm solution since the components that we’re about to add are not supported in a sandbox.

3. At the time of writing, no SharePoint specific template item is available for deploying a WCF service, so we have to set up the solution file manually. The first thing we need to do is to add a new WCF Service item. Press CTRL-SHIFT-A to show the Add New Item dialog. Select Visual C# | WCF Service. Name the new class CalculationResultService.cs.

4. As before, Visual Studio will add two new files to our solution together with the appropriate references required to support WCF. Again, we’ll start off by defining our service contract. In the ICalculationResultService.cs file, enter the following:

   using System;
   using System.Runtime.Serialization;
   using System.ServiceModel;
   
   namespace WorkflowDemonstration
   {
     [ServiceContract]
     public interface ICalculationResultService
     {
       [OperationContract]
       bool ProcessCalculationResult(CalculationResult result);
     }
   
     [DataContract]
     public class CalculationResult
     {
       [DataMember(IsRequired = true)]
       public string Result { get; set; }
       [DataMember(IsRequired = true)]
       public Guid SiteId { get; set; }
       [DataMember(IsRequired = true)]
       public Guid WebId { get; set; }
       [DataMember(IsRequired = true)]
       public Guid InstanceId { get; set; }
     }
   }
   
   
   					  

5. Since our service will ultimately send events to workflows hosted on the SharePoint workflow runtime, we have a few things to do before we can fully implement the required functionality. For now, we’ll create a stub method based on our interface. In the CalculationResultService.cs file, enter the following:

   using System;
   using System.Collections.Generic;
   using System.Linq;
   using System.Runtime.Serialization;
   using System.ServiceModel;
   using System.Text;
   
   namespace WorkflowDemonstration
   {
    [AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode = AspNetCompatibilityRequirements-
   Mode.Allowed)]
     public class CalculationResultService : ICalculationResultService
     {
       public bool ProcessCalculationResult(CalculationResult result)
        {
         return true;
        }
     }
   }