You can see video tutorial of this article
WCF Data Service, Project Astoria, OData and ADO.Net Data Service are same thing.
What is ODATA?
· ODATA is HTTP or web protocol to querying or manipulating data.
· ODATA uses HTTP, JOSN or ATOM.
· ODATA can be implemented through any platform supports, HTTP, XML or JSON.
· ODATA can expose data/information from relational database, File systems, Web sites, services etc.
· ODATA specification available under Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise (OSP) so third parties, including open source projects, can build Open Data Protocol clients and services.
What is WCF Data Service?
· WCF Data service framework provides an API that allows data to be created and consumed over HTTP using RESTful service.
· WCF Data service supports all database operations using URI.
· WCF Data service can expose an entity model via an URI.
· WCF Data service is RESTful service to support CRUD operations on database.
· WCF Data service could be consumed by any type of client like Windows, SilverLight, Web, AJAX and console.
Block diagram explaining working of WCF Data Service
1. Create a Data Access layer using ADO.Net Entity model or LINQ.
2. Make sure Data model is implementing IQueryable and IUpdateable .
3. Expose the data model as REST service using WCF Data service.
CRUD Operations and HTTP verb
Supported Message Format
Sample on WCF Data Service
Let us say, we have a table called Student of below structure below in our data base
In Student table RollNumber is a primary key.
Let us create WCF Data Service which will expose the above table as REST service
Step 1: Create a Web Application
Create a new project and select ASP.Net Web Application project template from Web tab. Give a meaning full name to the web application.
Step 2: Create a Data Model
We can create a Data Model, which can be exposed as WCF Data Service in three ways
1. Using ADO.Net Entity model.
2. Using LINQ to SQL class.
3. Custom Data Model.
For our purpose, I am going to use ADO.Net Entity model to create the data model. So to create an entity model
1. Right click on web application and add a new item
2. Select ADO.Net Entity model from Data tab.
3. Since we have table in data base. so we are going to choose option , select from database.
4. Either choose the data base from drop down or create a new data connection.
In above connection string StudentDBEntities is name of the connection string. If we want, we can change this connection string as per our requirement.
If your required data base is not listed in drop down then, you can create a new data connection. To create new data connection click on New Connection
You can give the data base server name and press refresh. After pressing Refresh, you can choose the data base from the drop down. After selecting the data base click on Test Connection to test connection established successfully or not?
5. Select tables, views and stored procedure from data base you want to make as the part of your data model. Since we are having only one table so we are selecting one table.
If you want you can change name of the data model. By default it is name of the data base appended by the term model. Click on Finish button to complete and create the data model.
6. Now we can see that StudentDataModel.edmx has been created in the designer.
Since there is only one table, so there is only one table model at design surface.
Now we have created the data model which can be exposed as WCF Data Service. Now you can see in solution explorer, you have StudentModel.edmx and StdentModel.Designer.cs files.
Step 3: Creating WCF Data Service
1. Right click on Web Application project and add a new item.
2. Select WCF Data Service from Web tab. Give any meaningful name. I am leaving the default name here.
3. After adding the WCF Data Service, we can see a service file with extension .svc has been added to the solution explorer. When we click on .svc.cs file, we can see the code generated for us.
Very first we need to put data source name. To do so uncomment the first commented line and put the data source name. In our case name of the model, which we created in 2nd step is the data source. Our data source name is StudentDBEntities
Now we need to set access rules for entity or entity set. Since we have only one table, so either we can give name of the table explicitly or if we want to set the same access rule for all the table in the data model or data source we could put *.
So we are setting the access rule that, on the entity in data source perform all the operations.
Step 4: Run the WCF Data Service
Just press F5 to run the WCF Data Service. Data Service will be hosted in the default ASP.Net server called Cassini.
On running you can see, one table is listed. That table is Student
The above is the data in ATOM message format.
Note: If your browser is not showing the expected result, make sure Feed reading of browser is off. To do from menu of IE and select tool and then Internet Option then Content
MetaData
· One feature of WCF data service is that, they provide operation to retrieve Metadata about the service and offer of the service.
· This is very useful in determining structure before requesting them.
· WCF Data service provides metadata accessible.
· Metadata expose all the resource and custom services.
· Metadata could be accessed by appending $metadata to service URI.
So, the URI to access metadata is
http://localhost:29409/WcfDataService1.svc/$metadata
URI Query options
We can perform various queries in the browser itself using the URI query options.
Options
| Options | Descriptions |
| expand | Request set of related entities to be retrieved. |
| orderby | Indicates the sequence entity to be retrieved |
| skip | Skip number of data items. |
| top | At most returns top number of data items |
| filter | Applies the filtering condition |
Operators
| Operators | Descriptions |
| eq | Equal |
| ne | Not Equal |
| gt | Greater Than |
| ge | Greate than or equal to |
| lt | Less than |
| le | Less than or equal to |
| and | Logical AND |
| or | Logical OR |
| not | Logical NOT |
Math Operators
| Operators | Descriptions |
| add | add |
| sub | Subtract |
| mul | multiply |
| div | Division |
| mod | remainder |
Various queries
1. Fetch all the records from the table Student
URI: http://localhost:29409/WcfDataService1.svc/Students
Result
2. Fetch the student details with roll number 1
URI: http://localhost:29409/WcfDataService1.svc/Students?$filter=RollNumber eq’1′
3. Fetch top 2 record from the student table
URI: http://localhost:29409/WcfDataService1.svc/Students?$top =2
4. Fetch the records of the student with roll number 1 or 3
URI: http://localhost:29409/WcfDataService1.svc/Students?($filter=RollNumber eq’1′)or($filter=rollnumber eq ‘3’)
Different Access rules on the entity set
| Enumerator | Description |
| All | All Read and Write are permitted |
| AllRead | All Read permitted |
| AllWrite | All Write is permitted |
| None | No access is permitted |
| ReadMultiple | Reading multiple row is permitted |
| ReadSingle | Reading a single row is permitted |
| WriteAppend | Creating New data is permitted |
| WriteDelete | Deleting data is permitted |
| WriteMerge | Merge updating is permitted |
| WriteReplace | Replace updating is permitted |
As we discussed above we can set access rule for a particular entity or whole entity set in data source.
config.SetEntitySetAccessRule(“*”, EntitySetRights.All);
This will permit all right access on all entity set.
config.SetEntitySetAccessRule(“Students”, EntitySetRights.AllWrite);
This will permit all write access on Student entity set.
Creating a client to consume WCF Data Service
Step 1
Add a new project in the same solution of type console application.
Step 2
Add the service reference of WCF Data Service. To add right click on the console project and add a service reference. Since WCF Data Service and client project in the same solution , click on Discover to discover the service in the solution.
Add the reference of System.Data.Service.Client in client project also.
Step 3
Add namespaces
Step 4
Need to create instance of DataContext and StudentDBEntities. These two classes take as parameter in their constructor. Parameter is base URI of the WCF Data Service.
Retrieving all the records of table Students
Adding one record in the table Student
Updating a record in the table Student
Delete a record in the table Student
For Reference Full Source Code is here
Program.cs
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using ConsoleClient.ServiceReference1;
using System.Data.Services.Client;
namespace ConsoleClient
{
class Program
{
static DataServiceContext context;
static StudentDBEntities studentEntities;
static void Main(string[] args)
{
context = new DataServiceContext
(new Uri(“http://localhost:3803/WcfDataService1.svc/”));
studentEntities = new StudentDBEntities
(new Uri(“http://localhost:3803/WcfDataService1.svc/”));
//Get all The Records
foreach (var r in GetAllStudents())
{
Console.WriteLine(r.Name);
}
Console.Read();
// Insert one Record
AddStudent(new Student() { RollNumber = “100”, Name = “Pinal dave”, Subject = “Sql” });
Console.Read();
// Update the Record
UpdateStudent(new Student() { RollNumber = “100”, Name = “KMUG”, Subject = “Sql” });
Console.Read();
// Delete the Record
DeleteStudent(“100”);
// Get all the Records
foreach (var r in GetAllStudents())
{
Console.WriteLine(r.Name);
}
Console.Read();
}
static List<Student> GetAllStudents()
{
var res = from r in studentEntities.Students select r;
return res.ToList();
}
static void AddStudent(Student std)
{
context.AddObject(“Students”, std);
context.SaveChanges();
// Other way
//Student std1 = new Student() { RollNumber = “9999”,
// Name = “Pinale Dave”,
// Subject = “SQL Server” };
//studentEntities.AddToStudents(std);
//studentEntities.SaveChanges();
}
static void UpdateStudent(Student std)
{
Student stdtoUpdate = (from r in studentEntities.Students
where r.RollNumber == std.RollNumber
select r).First();
stdtoUpdate.Name = std.Name;
stdtoUpdate.Subject = std.Subject;
context.AttachTo(“Students”, stdtoUpdate);
context.UpdateObject(stdtoUpdate);
context.SaveChanges();
// Other way to Update
// studentEntities.UpdateObject(stdtoUpdate);
//studentEntities.SaveChanges();
}
static void DeleteStudent(string stdRollNo)
{
Student stdtoUpdate = (from r in studentEntities.Students
where r.RollNumber == stdRollNo
select r).First();
//context.AttachTo(“Students”, stdtoUpdate);
context.DeleteObject(stdtoUpdate);
context.SaveChanges();
//Other way
//studentEntities.DeleteObject(stdtoUpdate);
//studentEntities.SaveChanges();
}
}
}
I hope this article was useful. Thanks for reading. Happy Coding.
Dhananjay Kumar 
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