Screencasts – Creating Your First WCF Client

Welcome back to the WCF screencast series! After a spending four weeks covering WF topics, we return to WCF for the latest video in the weekly WF/WCF Screencast series. In the coming month, we’ll be covering topics around the calling of WCF services.

This week, CSD MVP Aaron Skonnard from PluralSight guides the viewer through how to create your first WCF client application that consumes an existing WCF service (see the screencasts covering the creation of a WCF service and how to create endpoints for more details). We add the service to the client application using the WCF service's Metadata Exchange (MEX) endpoint - which generates the service definition and contract, which Aaron then writes the code to consume via code...and how to have VS2008 open up your client as the test client at F5 (debug) instead of the standard WCF test client when the service is launched.

As he shows you how to write the client side code, he touches on how the service endpoint information is stored in the config files and storing the results back from the WCF service in local .NET object classes.

As mentioned above, the WCF screencasts are a weekly series of Channel9 videos done in conjunction with the folks at PluralSight to help developers new to WF/WCF see how the technology is used. It’s worth noting that Aaron and the PluralSight folks are now offering online training courses (in a format similar to these screencasts) as a compliment to their catalog of instructor-led training courses covering Microsoft connected systems technologies. Their training topics range from .NET v3.5 (including an excellent WF/WCF Double Feature course) to WSS to BizTalk server.