I get frustrated sometime trying to play around with new Microsoft technologies.  The process usually involves;  install this CTP, apply this hotfix, create a project using this template, and this item using another template.  By then end I may have something working but I don’t know what magic happened behind the scenes.

Here is a bare bones implementation of an OData service, no magic allowed (Ok, without actually going to the command line compiler). 

What you will need for this experiment is:

1) .Net Framework 3.5 sp1

2) A new Visual Studio 2008 console application

3) These references

    • System
    • System.Core
    • System.ServiceModel          <—This brings in the WCF stack
    • System.ServiceModel.Web <—This brings in the Web friendly WCF service host
    • System.Data.Services         <—This brings in the OData service host

 

4) and this code

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data.Services;
using System.Linq;

namespace ODataConsoleService {
    class Program {
        static void Main(string[] args) {

            string serviceAddress = "http://localhost:998";
            Uri[] uriArray = { new Uri(serviceAddress) };
            Type serviceType = typeof(CustomerDataService);

            using (var host = new DataServiceHost(serviceType, uriArray)) {
                host.Open();
                Console.WriteLine("Press any key to stop service");
                Console.ReadKey();
            }

        }

    }

    // Expose IQueryable properties as read-only Atom collections
    public class CustomerDataService : DataService<CustomerService> {
        public static void InitializeService(IDataServiceConfiguration config) {
            config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.AllRead);
        }
    }

    // Expose list of customers Customer as IQueryable
    public class CustomerService {
        private List<Customer> _List = new List<Customer>();

        public CustomerService() {

            _List.Add(new Customer() { ID = 1, Code = "BLAH", Name = "Blah" });
            _List.Add(new Customer() { ID = 2, Code = "Bob", Name = "Bob's Hardware" });
            _List.Add(new Customer() { ID = 3, Code = "Bill", Name = "Bills Fishmongers" });
        }

        public IQueryable<Customer> Customers {
            get {
                return _List.AsQueryable<Customer>();
            }
        }

    }

    // Entity to expose in atom:Entry
    public class Customer {
        public int ID { get; set; }  // ID is required to be a viable OData entity
        public string Code { get; set; }
        public string Name { get; set; }
    }

}

 

That’s it.  That’s all you need to expose a complete Atom Pub compliant service exposing your objects.

Once you have that, you can Run the program and use a web browser to browse to http://localhost:998 to see the collections.   Don’t forget to look in the magic url http://localhost:998/$metadata  Sorry, some magic I am still trying to figure out how to remove!

Credit goes to Alex James and Phani for getting me most of the way there.