I have just started looking into Windows Communication Foundation.

Pawel Glowacki created a really nice article on the CodeGear Developer Network titled Introduction to WCF Programming in Delphi.

I'm particularly interested in web development and I noticed that there is a WCF Service Template in Visual Studio 2005, so I have converted it to Delphi.

I have uploaded the template to CodeCentral.

If you are not sure how to use the template, I have a blog post about templates and how you install them,

Once installed you can now create a new WCF Service application

You should end up with a new ASP.Net  Web Application with a single WCF Service.

Assuming that you have already installed Microsoft dotnet v3.0, you can now build and run the application.

The service description should now appear in a browser.

To exercise the web application you need to do the following:-

1) Create a new VCL.Net application

2) Add a reference to the System.ServiceModel assembly

3) Add

C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.0

to the compiler search path

4) Your code might look something like

uses
  System.ServiceModel, Service, System.ServiceModel.Channels;

{$R *.nfm}

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var
  aEndpointAddress: EndpointAddress;
  aBinding: WSHttpBinding;
  aFactory: ChannelFactory<IMyService>;
  aChannel: IMyService;
  someValue: string;
  value: DataContract1;
begin

  try
    aEndpointAddress := EndpointAddress.Create('http://localhost:8080/WCFServiceWebApplication1/Service.svc');
    aBinding := WSHttpBinding.Create;
    aFactory := ChannelFactory<IMyService>.Create(aBinding, aEndpointAddress);
    aChannel := aFactory.CreateChannel;
    try
      someValue:=aChannel.MyOperation1('John');
      ShowMessage(someValue);

      value:= DataContract1.Create;

      value.FirstName:='John';
      value.LastName:='Moshakis';

      aChannel.MyOperation2(value);
      ShowMessage(someValue);

    finally
      IChannel(aChannel).Close;
      IDisposable(aChannel).Dispose;
    end;
  except
    on E:Exception do
    begin
      raise;
    end;

  end;

end;
 

 A word of warning, if like me you use Cassini as your web server, I think you need to upgrade to the latest version. Below is a screenshot of the application running with the version of Cassini supplied with Delphi 2007.

Please read my blog post about upgrading Cassini.

Comments welcome 

 I also see that Pawel is doing a presentation at CodeRage II titled "Delphi for .NET WCF Programming: Deeper Dive", I'm looking forward to listening to that,