For a Silverlight app, what is the best way to load data from a service at startup?

I am fairly new to Silverlight. I have an application I'm working on that needs some data from the server before the user is can start working with the application. This data is accessible via a WCF service on the web server.

My question is this: what is the best way to go about getting this data at Silverlight applicaiton startup?

My thought it to create a static class with a static member that would hold the results and to make the WCF service call in the 开发者_运维问答Application_Startup event handler. My concern is that if this call is made asynchronously, how can I be certain that the data will have been retrieved from the service prior to the user interacting with the application?

Thanks

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The simplest way is to let the application start normally and use a BusyIndicator control to stop the user from interacting with the application.

You could call your service during startup and replace/disable the BusyIndicator control once the wcf call returns.

The following link has some good advices on starting up a Silverlight app: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/slperf/archive/2010/08/13/silverlight-startup-best-practices.aspx

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You need to remember that the Application_Startup method is actually loaded when the Silverlight percentage bar comes up, its is not until you get to:

this.RootVisual = new MainPage();

that you are able to put a busy indicator or actually visually show your application. So what i would do is on the Async call back, i would then display:

this.RootVisual = new MainPage();

after you have recieved your data back.

The other comment talks about using a BusyIndicator, but you cant do that in the App.Xaml or App.Xaml.cs file, as at the point of time there is not main page yet.

Thanks