Professional WCF Programming: .NET Development with the Windows® Communication Foundation

Chapter 7. Clients

Up until now this book has mainly focused WCF service implementations. The last three chapters have discussed the components necessary to build a Windows Communication Foundation service. Chapter 4 discussed addresses, Chapter 5 discussed bindings, and Chapter 6 discussed contracts. Each of these is essential in building a successful service. It is time, however, to change the focus and take a good look at the client, the piece of the equation that utilizes everything you have learned so far.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Client architecture

• Client communication patterns

• Creating client code

• Defining client bindings and endpoints

Client Architecture

A Windows Communication Foundation client is an application used to invoke functionality exposed by a service. The client application will communicate with the service via a service endpoint. In order to do that the client needs to know several pieces of information about the service, such as the address at which the endpoint is communicating, the binding the service is using, and the service contract. Each of these elements has been discussed in the previous chapters.

A good look under the hood of a client will reveal some important things about its makeup. One of the things you will find is a channel built on binding settings specified in the configuration file. Just to be clear, these bindings are the same bindings that have been discussed in the past couple of chapters. These bindings allow the client and service ...