Using Windows Azure Service Bus From Silverlight

Question

Is it possible to call services hosted on the Service Bus from a Silverlight application? I tried googling around but none of the results helped.

Looking at the samples (EchoService) they are using a specific microsoft DLL to setup the authentication for the service. I cannot seem to add this DLL to my project (duh it is for the full CLR) and am not sure how to replicate its behaviour while on the client side.

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

I've looked at the November 2008 CTP code and getting the EchoService client to work from Silverlight is highly unlikely due to the dependancy on the NetTcpRelayBinding and Silverlight's limited TCP support.

I suggest getting your Silverlight client to call a back-end service that you control and proxy the requests to the Azure platform. Not an ideal solution, but a workaround for now.

Update: The Azure Service Bus is now accessible from Silverlight using REST API calls. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff797957.aspx for more information.

Answer 2

You can use it. You have to host a cross access policy file service on the service bus (a service that serves this file) An example of a service that does this is given on Clemens Vaster's blog. (just google it, it's on the msdn site) It is included with the reverse web proxy.

You have to use queued the rest APIs. Refer to the Http queue example included with the SDK.

Note that with Silverlight, you'll have to make use of the async libraries.