Code Quick Start: Create and deploy a WCF service in Windows Azure

Launch Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 with administrator privileges. To launch Visual Studio with administrator privileges, right-click Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and then click Run as administrator.

On the File menu, click New, and then click Project.

Within the New Project dialog, navigate to Installed Templates, Visual C#, and click Cloud.

Click Windows Azure Project. If needed, modify the Location: field, which indicates where your solution will be stored. Click OK to close the New Project dialog.

Within the New Windows Azure Project dialog, navigate to Visual C#, click the WCF Service Web Role, and then click the > symbol. This will add a web role to your Windows Azure solution. A web role provides an environment for running web sites or applications as supported by Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0. Click OK to close the New Windows Azure Project dialog.

Modify IService1.cs to contain one operation, GetHello. To navigate to IService1.cs, open Solution Explorer. If Solution Explorer is not visible, from the View menu click Solution Explorer. Within Solution Explorer, expand WCFServiceWebRole1 and double-click IService1.cs. Modify the contents of IService1.cs to be the following code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Runtime.Serialization;
using System.ServiceModel;
using System.ServiceModel.Web;
using System.Text;

namespace WCFServiceWebRole1
{
   
    [ServiceContract]
    public interface IService1
    {

        [OperationContract]
        string GetHello();
    }

}

Save and close IService1.cs.

Modify Service1.svc.cs to contain the implementation of the operation GetHello. (Use Solution Explorer to navigate to Service1.svc.cs similar to the way you navigated in the previous step.) Modify the contents of Service1.svc.cs to be the following code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Runtime.Serialization;
using System.ServiceModel;
using System.ServiceModel.Web;
using System.Text;

namespace WCFServiceWebRole1
{

    public class Service1 : IService1
    {
        public string GetHello()
        {
            return "Hello from my WCF service in Windows Azure!";
        }
    }
}

Save and close Service1.svc.cs.

Compile and run the service by clicking Debug from the menu and then clicking Start Without Debugging.

Before running the service in the cloud, we’ll test it locally (on your development workstation). First, you’ll need to create a client application to call into your WCF service. Before proceeding with the remaining steps in this topic, create the client application using the instructions at Code Quick Start: Create a client application that uses a WCF service deployed to Windows Azure. You will need to call the client application to successfully test the WCF service.

Note
Ensure that the service that you previously created continues to run while you create the client application.

Within Visual Studio, and working on your WCF service application (not the client application), use Solution Explorer to open Service1.svc.cs. Right-click the following code line:

return "Hello from my WCF service in Windows Azure!";

click Breakpoint, and then click Insert Breakpoint.

Press F5 to start the Visual Studio debugger.

The breakpoint being set on the return "Hello from my WCF service in Windows Azure!"; code line results in Visual Studio stopping at the breakpoint when a client application makes a call to the GetHello operation. This just shows you that normal Visual Studio debugging can be used when you run your service locally. However, you also can utilize the Windows Azure compute emulator. The compute emulator allows you to perform tasks such as viewing a running instance of your local deployment. The compute emulator should start automatically when you debug the Windows Azure project. To start the compute emulator manually, from Windows click the Windows Start icon, click All Programs, click Windows Azure Emulators – November 2011, and click Compute Emulator. The Windows Azure icon for the compute emulator should now appear in the notification area of your Windows taskbar.

Right-click the Windows Azure icon in the notification area of your Windows taskbar and click Show Compute Emulator UI. This opens the user interface for the compute emulator. Within the compute emulator user interface, expand the Service Deployments node. If you continue to navigate through this node, you’ll see your local deployment corresponding to the WCF service being debugged. Clicking the deployment will show you a console view of diagnostics information resulting from your application and its interaction with the development environment. For example, you may see a diagnostics line such as:

[runtime] Role entrypoint . CALLING OnStart()

That message is provided by Windows Azure when your web role’s OnStart() method is called.

Within the compute emulator you can run, suspend, or restart your service’s role instances.

If you’re still running the Visual Studio debugger, close it by clicking the Debug menu item and then click Stop Debugging. Close the compute emulator as well.

The web role in your service is encapsulated in the WebRole class which is derived from the RoleEntryPoint class, which contains the methods OnStart(), OnStop(), and Run(). The OnStart(), OnStop(), and Run() methods can be overridden to suit the needs of your service. For more information RoleEntryPoint, see RoleEntryPoint.

Our next step will be to deploy the service to the cloud using the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal.

You’ll need to publish a service package and a service configuration file before you deploy your service. To do so, within Visual Studio’s Solution Explorer, right-click the project name (such as WindowsAzureProject1) and then click Package….

The dialog box should look similar to the following:

The Service configuration drop-down box displays values for each ServiceConfiguration.*.cscfg file that exists for your project—-in this case, ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg and ServiceConfiguration.Local.cscfg. Since you will be deploying this package to Windows Azure, leave the Cloud configuration selected.

Click Package. Visual Studio will open a folder that contains two files, ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg and <yourProjectName>.cspkg (such as WindowsAzureProject1.cspkg). As discussed earlier, ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg was copied to this output folder based on your service configuration selection in the Package Windows Azure Application. The .cspkg extension is for service package files. A package file contains the service definition as well as the binaries and other items for the application being deployed.

Make a note of the path to these files, as you’ll be prompted for the path when you deploy the service using the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal.

Log in to the Windows Azure Management Portal to deploy the service. Log in at http://manage.windowsazure.com.

Within the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal, click Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN.

Click New Hosted Service.

Select a subscription that will be used for this service.

Enter a name for your service. This name is used to distinguish your services within the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal for the specified subscription.

Enter the URL for your service. The Windows Azure Platform Management Portal ensures that the URL is unique within the Windows Azure platform (not in use by anyone else’s service).

Choose a region from the list of regions, for example North Central US.

Choose Deploy to stage environment.

Ensure that Start after successful deployment is checked.

Specify a name for the deployment.

For Package location, click the corresponding Browse Locally… button, navigate to the folder where your <YourProjectName>.cspkg file is, and select the file.

For Configuration file, click the corresponding Browse Locally… button, navigate to the folder where your ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg is, and select the file.

Click OK. You will receive a warning after you click OK because there is only one instance of the web role defined for your application (this setting is contained in the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg file). For purposes of this walk-through, override the warning by clicking Yes, but realize that you likely will want more than one instance of a web role for a robust application.

You can monitor the status of the deployment in the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal by navigating to the Hosted Services section. Because this was a deployment to a staging environment, the DNS will be of the form http://<guid>.cloudapp.net. You can see the DNS name if you click the deployment name in the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal (you may need to expand the Hosted Service node to see the deployment name); the DNS name is in the right hand pane of the portal. Once your deployment has a status of Ready (as indicated by the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal), you can enter the web service URL in your browser to see that your service is deployed to the cloud. The web service URL for a WCF service deployed to the staging environment will be of the form http:// <guid>.cloudapp.net/Service1.svc. For example, http://72d5eb5875234b7ca8c7f74c80a2a1f1.cloudapp.net/service1.svc.

Although this walk-through was for a deployment to the staging environment, a deployment to production follows the same steps, except you pick the production environment instead of staging. A deployment to production results in a DNS name based on the URL of your choice, instead of a GUID as used for staging. The web service URL for a WCF service deployed to the production environment will be of the form http:// <your_dns_name>.cloudapp.net/Service1.svc.

You can now use a client application to call into the WCF web service that you have deployed to the Windows Azure cloud. Create a client application as described in Code Quick Start: Create a client application that uses a WCF service deployed to Windows Azure. Ensure that you use the proper web service URL (either staging or production) for your client application.

If this is your first exposure to the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal, take some time to familiarize yourself with its functionality. For example, similar to the way you deployed your service, the portal provides functionality for stopping, starting, deleting, or upgrading a deployment.