Hi i have some REST services created with WCF Rest Started Kit and i need to host these services in a WPF app. can someone point in the right direction?
R – Hosting WCF Rest Services in WPF Application
hostingrestwcf
Related Solutions
Overall:
Both PUT and POST can be used for creating.
You have to ask, "what are you performing the action upon?", to distinguish what you should be using. Let's assume you're designing an API for asking questions. If you want to use POST, then you would do that to a list of questions. If you want to use PUT, then you would do that to a particular question.
Great, both can be used, so which one should I use in my RESTful design:
You do not need to support both PUT and POST.
Which you use is up to you. But just remember to use the right one depending on what object you are referencing in the request.
Some considerations:
- Do you name the URL objects you create explicitly, or let the server decide? If you name them then use PUT. If you let the server decide then use POST.
- PUT is defined to assume idempotency, so if you PUT an object twice, it should have no additional effect. This is a nice property, so I would use PUT when possible. Just make sure that the PUT-idempotency actually is implemented correctly in the server.
- You can update or create a resource with PUT with the same object URL
- With POST you can have 2 requests coming in at the same time making modifications to a URL, and they may update different parts of the object.
An example:
I wrote the following as part of another answer on SO regarding this:
POST:
Used to modify and update a resource
POST /questions/<existing_question> HTTP/1.1 Host: www.example.com/
Note that the following is an error:
POST /questions/<new_question> HTTP/1.1 Host: www.example.com/
If the URL is not yet created, you should not be using POST to create it while specifying the name. This should result in a 'resource not found' error because
<new_question>
does not exist yet. You should PUT the<new_question>
resource on the server first.You could though do something like this to create a resources using POST:
POST /questions HTTP/1.1 Host: www.example.com/
Note that in this case the resource name is not specified, the new objects URL path would be returned to you.
PUT:
Used to create a resource, or overwrite it. While you specify the resources new URL.
For a new resource:
PUT /questions/<new_question> HTTP/1.1 Host: www.example.com/
To overwrite an existing resource:
PUT /questions/<existing_question> HTTP/1.1 Host: www.example.com/
Additionally, and a bit more concisely, RFC 7231 Section 4.3.4 PUT states (emphasis added),
4.3.4. PUT
The PUT method requests that the state of the target resource be
created
orreplaced
with the state defined by the representation enclosed in the request message payload.
Roy Fielding's comment about including a body with a GET request.
Yes. In other words, any HTTP request message is allowed to contain a message body, and thus must parse messages with that in mind. Server semantics for GET, however, are restricted such that a body, if any, has no semantic meaning to the request. The requirements on parsing are separate from the requirements on method semantics.
So, yes, you can send a body with GET, and no, it is never useful to do so.
This is part of the layered design of HTTP/1.1 that will become clear again once the spec is partitioned (work in progress).
....Roy
Yes, you can send a request body with GET but it should not have any meaning. If you give it meaning by parsing it on the server and changing your response based on its contents, then you are ignoring this recommendation in the HTTP/1.1 spec, section 4.3:
...if the request method does not include defined semantics for an entity-body, then the message-body SHOULD be ignored when handling the request.
And the description of the GET method in the HTTP/1.1 spec, section 9.3:
The GET method means retrieve whatever information ([...]) is identified by the Request-URI.
which states that the request-body is not part of the identification of the resource in a GET request, only the request URI.
Update
The RFC2616 referenced as "HTTP/1.1 spec" is now obsolete. In 2014 it was replaced by RFCs 7230-7237. Quote "the message-body SHOULD be ignored when handling the request" has been deleted. It's now just "Request message framing is independent of method semantics, even if the method doesn't define any use for a message body" The 2nd quote "The GET method means retrieve whatever information ... is identified by the Request-URI" was deleted. - From a comment
From the HTTP 1.1 2014 Spec:
A payload within a GET request message has no defined semantics; sending a payload body on a GET request might cause some existing implementations to reject the request.
Best Answer
There's a really good project in Codeplex called "WCF Guidance for WPF developers" which has white papers, articles, mini screencast to show you a lot of ways to use and leverage WCF if you're a WPF developer:
http://wcfguidanceforwpf.codeplex.com/
Not sure if they have anything on REST webservices - but go have a look!
For a series of intros to WCF REST Starter Kit services per se, go see the Pluralsight web site and their screencast series - excellent resources!
http://www.pluralsight.com/main/screencasts/default.aspx
Basically, hosting a WCF REST service in your WPF app is no different from hosting any other WCF service, so I do believe all the excellent Pluralsight screencasts on hosting your own service should definitely give you a heads-up on how to proceeed!
Marc