Converting a Get/Set class into a WCF service

Question

I have a class:

namespace BugNETLibrary
{
    public class NewUser
    {
        public string UserName { get; set; }
        public int UserRole { get; set; }
        public string LoweredUserName { get; set; }
    }
}

I am trying to convert this class into a WCF Service that I can reference in my project.

I have at the minute an interface:

[ServiceContract]
    public interface INewUser
    {
        string UserName { get; set; }
        int UserRole { get; set; }
        string LoweredUserName { get; set; }
    }


[DataContract]
public class GetNewUser
{
    string userName;
    int userRole;
    string loweredUserName;

    [DataMember]
    public string UserName
    {
        get { return userName; }
        set { userName = value; }
    }

    [DataMember]
    public int UserRole
    {
        get { return userRole; }
        set { userRole = value; }
    }

    [DataMember]
    public string LoweredUserName
    {
        get { return loweredUserName; }
        set { loweredUserName = value; }
    }
}

I'm not sure if even this is correct but i am not sure what to add to the service class that inherits the interface so all I have is

public class NewUser : INewUser
    {

    }

Can somebody help me with what needs doing next? I'm sure I have done something wrong already but I am not sure what. Is this actually possible?

Answer 1

Services expose methods (Operation Contracts) to the client. Your interface doesn't have any methods, so there's nothing to implement (from a service perspective).

You could do something like this:

[ServiceContract]
public interface INewUser
{
    [OperationContract]
    UserInfo CreateNewUser(string userName);
}

Then in the implementing class, you'd have:

public NewUser : INewUser
{

    public UserInfo CreateNewUser(string userName)
    {

        return new UserInfo() {
                   UserName = "John Doe",
                   UserRole = 5,
                   LoweredUserName = "john doe"
                   };
    }
}

UserInfo would be the class used to represent the info, per your original code, marked as a data contract:

[DataContract]
public class UserInfo
{

    [DataMember]
    public string UserName { get; set; }

    [DataMember]
    public int UserRole { get; set; }

    [DataMember]
    public string LoweredUserName { get; set; }
}

This is a trivial example based on your above code, to show you how it can all go together.

HOWEVER

What you really should do is look at your existing library, wrap the functionality in a WCF service, and mark the NewUser class up as a data contract. It looks like you're focusing on the data, and you should first focus on the functionality.

Put another way, what methods in your current library use NewUser, as either inputs or return types - that is what goes into the service, not the properties of the NewUser class.