Accessing Web Services in Silverlight

Silverlight

Silverlight version 4 client applications run in the browser and often need to access data from a variety of external sources. A typical example involves accessing data from a database on a back-end server and displaying it in a Silverlight user interface. Another common scenario is to update data on a back-end service through a Silverlight user interface that posts to that service. These external data sources often take the form of Web services.

The services can be SOAP services created using the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) or some other SOAP-based technology, or they can be plain HTTP or REST services. Silverlight clients can access these Web services directly or, in the case of SOAP services, by using a proxy generated from metadata published by the service.

Silverlight also provides the necessary functionality to work with a variety of data formats used by services. These formats include XML, JSON, RSS, and Atom. These data formats are accessed using Serialization components, Linq to XML, Linq to JSON, and Syndication components. Web services that a Silverlight application can access must conform to certain rules to allow such access. These rules are discussed within the relevant topics in this section.

In This Section

Building and Accessing Services Using Proxies

Describes how to create, configure, and debug Silverlight applications that use services, as well as how to create services intended for these applications.

Building and Accessing Duplex Services

Describes how to implement duplex communications between a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Web service and a Silverlight client, where a service can spontaneously push data updates to the Silverlight client as they occur.

Accessing HTTP and REST-Based Services Directly

Describes how to work with HTTP-based services (including REST services) directly, and how to access XML, JSON, RSS, and Atom data from these services with a Silverlight client.

Securing Access to Services for Silverlight

Describes security issues that should be considered when accessing services from Silverlight clients and when building ASP.NET and WCF services intended for use by Silverlight clients.

Making a Service Available Across Domain Boundaries

Describes how to configure a service so that it can be accessed by Silverlight clients across domain boundaries.

Silverlight and WCF Feature Comparison

Describes the subset of WCF features supported by Silverlight 4 and outlines where there are differences between the behavior of these features in Silverlight and the full .NET Framework.

Read more: MSDN

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