Client Application Services: Getting Started
Creating the Windows Client
- Create the .NET 3.5 client Windows Forms application using Visual Studio 2008 and name it, say, 'ClientApp'.
- Change the Project Properties so that the application uses Client Application Services to connect to the ASP.NET Application Service created in earlier steps.
Project -> ClientApp Properties -> Services:
- Select 'Enable client application services'
- Select 'Use Forms authentication'
- Specify the URL based on port given earlier.
- Add controls to the startup form to accept login credentials and also a button to submit the form, as shown in Figure 8.
- In the 'Login' button click event, add the following code to call the Membership API and pass the entered credentials.
- Build and execute the application. Make sure that Web Service created earlier is running.
- To test, provide wrong credentials. You will get the output shown in Figure 9.
- Provide correct credentials this time, and the output will be as in Figure 10:
Click here for a larger image.
Figure 6: Creating a new Windows Forms Application
Click here for a larger image.
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YahooBuzzFigure 7: Enable Client Application Service
Figure 8: Client Login Form
if (!Membership.ValidateUser(textUserName.Text,
textPassword.Text))
{
MessageBox.Show("Incorrect Username or Password",
"Pls try again",
MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
Application.Exit();
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("Login Successful","Welcome",
MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Information);
Application.Exit();
}
Figure 9: Output on wrong credentials
Figure 10: Output on correct credentials
Conclusion
Client Application Services simplifies the access to ASP.NET Application Services and thus helps in managing the user information, authentication, and authorization at a common place for both web and Windows Applications.
Other important things that can be tried out using Client Application Services are:
- Accessing directly from Client Application Services classes
- Configuring offline support
- Implementing logout functionality
About the Author
Vikas Goyal is a Microsoft MVP Solutions Architect with several years of industry experience. He is mainly involved in designing products/solutions for Financial Industry. He can be contacted via his web site, http://www.VikasGoyal.net; or his blog, http://dotnetwithme.blogspot.com.
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