Cross platform WCF service

I want to use a WCF service and consume it using all the mobile platforms iPhone, android, Blackbery, Nokia etc'

Whats my best strategy for using those开发者_高级运维 clients with a WCF service. it will have to be secured of course.

Thanks

amit

I disagree with SOAP and JSON. Use RESTfull service with POX (plain old xml). It will be most probably supported by all platform. Mobile phones can have limited SOAP stack implementations and JSON is usually used with browsers. My friend has BlackBerry and he continuously complains about its support for JavaScript.

To secure your service use HTTPS.

Use a SOAP or JSON endpoint. Most platforms will have support for these (or it'll be easy to find libraries). JSON is more web oriented (Javascript) but will work in other situations as well.

Mono supports WCF so maybe their iPhone and Android will support it as well.

Totally agree with @Ladislav on not expecting clients to be able to consume SOAP. Seems like SOAP stacks are lacking unless your client is native .NET or Java. Your clients will thank you by allowing them to choose JSON (web clients) or XML (system integration). Secure via HTTPS and basic auth or an API key.

If you already have an existing infrastructure of WCF services that you want to aggregate, or adapt, for downlevel clients you could put that POX (or 'REST') service in front of them and let it handle mapping protocols and formats for you. e.g. HTTP/S to TCP/IP and XML or JSON to SOAP.

The upside is that you will make it easier for downlevel clients to consume your services. The downside is that you've added an extra layer, which will cause complexity. Some tools, like WCF Routing Service (free) or Apigee (commercial), coupled with a solid automated deployment proces can help mitigate this complexity.

To build a REST service that supports XML or JSON, create your service with this template, it's designed for .NET 4.0. From there you can configure endpoints that respond in XML or JSON and let your client tell the service what response type it wants.

EDIT You can also have the service respond in a default format to reduce every client having to specify what format.

<standardEndpoints>
  <webHttpEndpoint>
    <standardEndpoint name="" defaultOutgoingResponseFormat="Json"/>
  </webHttpEndpoint>
</standardEndpoints>