Client Application Services: Getting Started

March 19, 2008
By Vikas Goyal

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Creating the Windows Client

Create the .NET 3.5 client Windows Forms application using Visual Studio 2008 and name it, say, 'ClientApp'.

Click here for a larger image.

Figure 6: Creating a new Windows Forms Application

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.

Click here for a larger image.

Figure 7: Enable Client Application Service

Add controls to the startup form to accept login credentials and also a button to submit the form, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Client Login Form

In the 'Login' button click event, add the following code to call the Membership API and pass the entered credentials.

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();
}

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.

Figure 9: Output on wrong credentials

Provide correct credentials this time, and the output will be as in Figure 10:

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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