Comments on: WCF and REST http://lostechies.com/colinjack/2009/09/11/wcf-and-rest/ Just another LosTechies site Tue, 24 Aug 2010 06:44:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 By: JOY http://lostechies.com/colinjack/2009/09/11/wcf-and-rest/#comment-51 JOY Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:22:29 +0000 /blogs/colinjack/archive/2009/09/12/wcf-and-rest.aspx#comment-51 Great! The articles so far have been full of great material. Glad to hear the serious will continue. Keep 'em coming! Great! The articles so far have been full of great material. Glad to hear the serious will continue. Keep ‘em coming!

]]> By: Colin Jack http://lostechies.com/colinjack/2009/09/11/wcf-and-rest/#comment-50 Colin Jack Sat, 19 Sep 2009 10:36:41 +0000 /blogs/colinjack/archive/2009/09/12/wcf-and-rest.aspx#comment-50 @Vish Ok sorry, those improvements are great. I'd argue that first 2 are key. 3/5/7 matter less than the others. I can do 4 currently but better linking/content negotiation and a *much* better story around extensibility are key, we've got framework for that but it was ridiculously difficult. On extensibility instead of examples, or in addition to, why not look at mob's contrib? @Jesse Ahh ok, we're not using WCF client-side at all. The support there is beyond dire. Not sure I want to drop back to the Message class, I know its an option but not an overly attractive one. @mob Yeah MS doesn't seem to be setup to listen, people on the teams seem interested but they've got pressures on all sides. Great on the Contrib, will need to give it a look over and agree that it looks like OSS is going to end up beating WCF hands-down unless there are serious improvements. @Vish
Ok sorry, those improvements are great. I’d argue that first 2 are key. 3/5/7 matter less than the others. I can do 4 currently but better linking/content negotiation and a *much* better story around extensibility are key, we’ve got framework for that but it was ridiculously difficult. On extensibility instead of examples, or in addition to, why not look at mob’s contrib?

@Jesse
Ahh ok, we’re not using WCF client-side at all. The support there is beyond dire. Not sure I want to drop back to the Message class, I know its an option but not an overly attractive one.

@mob
Yeah MS doesn’t seem to be setup to listen, people on the teams seem interested but they’ve got pressures on all sides. Great on the Contrib, will need to give it a look over and agree that it looks like OSS is going to end up beating WCF hands-down unless there are serious improvements.

]]> By: Jesse Ezell http://lostechies.com/colinjack/2009/09/11/wcf-and-rest/#comment-49 Jesse Ezell Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:36:16 +0000 /blogs/colinjack/archive/2009/09/12/wcf-and-rest.aspx#comment-49 REST is much easier with WCF when you throw out all the contract bullshit and use IRequestChannel / Message class and the http message properties directly. That makes it a shit framework for end users, but if you are building a REST framework, that is a much better place to start. That said... I would be much more interested in someone developing a generic / non-HTTP REST framework on top of WCF that yet another MVC framework for http... REST is much easier with WCF when you throw out all the contract bullshit and use IRequestChannel / Message class and the http message properties directly. That makes it a shit framework for end users, but if you are building a REST framework, that is a much better place to start.

That said… I would be much more interested in someone developing a generic / non-HTTP REST framework on top of WCF that yet another MVC framework for http…

]]> By: Vish http://lostechies.com/colinjack/2009/09/11/wcf-and-rest/#comment-48 Vish Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:45:38 +0000 /blogs/colinjack/archive/2009/09/12/wcf-and-rest.aspx#comment-48 Hi Colin One correction to your blog post - .NET 4.0 will have a lot of WCF improvements that correspond to asks we have got from you and others. Specifically 4.0 will have: 1. Content negotiation and richer format support for binary/text/views 2. Some linking support 3. Http exceptions 4. Conditional get/put support 5. Ability to use System.Web.Routing so that you dont need .svc files or .svc in the URL 6. Samples illustrating how to use WCF extensibility, and making it easier to do so (for example, adding Forms processing to WCF) 7. Support for JSONP And some other features. 4.0 Beta2, which will come out sometime this year, should have all these features. Your feedback will be welcome. Hi Colin

One correction to your blog post – .NET 4.0 will have a lot of WCF improvements that correspond to asks we have got from you and others. Specifically 4.0 will have:

1. Content negotiation and richer format support for binary/text/views
2. Some linking support
3. Http exceptions
4. Conditional get/put support
5. Ability to use System.Web.Routing so that you dont need .svc files or .svc in the URL
6. Samples illustrating how to use WCF extensibility, and making it easier to do so (for example, adding Forms processing to WCF)
7. Support for JSONP

And some other features.

4.0 Beta2, which will come out sometime this year, should have all these features.

Your feedback will be welcome.

]]> By: mob http://lostechies.com/colinjack/2009/09/11/wcf-and-rest/#comment-47 mob Sun, 13 Sep 2009 04:02:05 +0000 /blogs/colinjack/archive/2009/09/12/wcf-and-rest.aspx#comment-47 I feel your pain, we went through the same thing. I ended up writing an OSS library to fix some of the pain points in WCF REST that we were experiencing (http://wcfrestcontrib.codeplex.com/). And yes, the RSK is "appalling". It does not encourage good RESTful design, especially the templates. Thats bad news for REST newcomers since they may follow what comes out of Redmond if they don't know any better. And the starter kit (And the API) should be encouraging proper RESTful design. At least you were able to talk to the guys on the WCF REST team. I continually got put off by the two leads and finally gave up. It's almost like they didn't want to listen. And their responses on the Connect site to some of my issues were not very encouraging either. It really seemed like they didn't get it. The only one who I was briefly in contact with who seemed to get it was the WCF PM, he was a really sharp guy. A friend of mine just switched from WCF REST to OpenRasta and he really likes it. I think I'll be trying it out for my next REST project. Like you said, the good REST stacks will probably end up being OSS frameworks. m I feel your pain, we went through the same thing. I ended up writing an OSS library to fix some of the pain points in WCF REST that we were experiencing (http://wcfrestcontrib.codeplex.com/). And yes, the RSK is “appalling”. It does not encourage good RESTful design, especially the templates. Thats bad news for REST newcomers since they may follow what comes out of Redmond if they don’t know any better. And the starter kit (And the API) should be encouraging proper RESTful design.

At least you were able to talk to the guys on the WCF REST team. I continually got put off by the two leads and finally gave up. It’s almost like they didn’t want to listen. And their responses on the Connect site to some of my issues were not very encouraging either. It really seemed like they didn’t get it. The only one who I was briefly in contact with who seemed to get it was the WCF PM, he was a really sharp guy.

A friend of mine just switched from WCF REST to OpenRasta and he really likes it. I think I’ll be trying it out for my next REST project. Like you said, the good REST stacks will probably end up being OSS frameworks.

m

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