Remoting over the Web

This article has been excerpted from book "The Complete Visual C# Programmer's Guide" from the Authors of C# Corner.

It is also possible for Internet Information Server (IIS) to host remote objects. The Web-hosting example is in the Sample1 folder. The console client project is named WebClientExe.

To use IIS as a server, you must take a number of steps:

• The remote object must be server activated.
• Map a virtual directory, on the Web server, to the SimpleObjectLib folder.
• The remote object can't be programmatically configured. It must use a web.config file in the virtual directory's root, see Listing 25.26.

Listing 25.26: Web.config

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<configuration>
      <system.runtime.remoting>
            <application>
                  <service>
                        <wellknown
                        mode="SingleCall"
                        type="SimpleObjectLib.SimpleObject, SimpleObjectLib"
                        objectUri="Simple.rem">
                        </wellknown>
                  </service>
                  <channels>
                        <channel
                        name="Server-Activated Web Client"
                        type="System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.Http.HttpChannel, System.Runtime.Remoting"/>
                  </channels>
            </application>
      </system.runtime.remoting>
</configuration>

You should be aware of a number of items in the configuration file:

• No port number need be specified, as IIS has already been configured to listen on a port, normally port 80.
• The objectUri attribute in the wellknown element must use the extension .rem or .soap.
  
  The client code remains the same as previous server-activated examples (see Listing 25.27). The client output is shown in Figure 25.16.

Listing 25.27: WebClient.cs

      ChannelServices.RegisterChannel(new HttpChannel());
      SimpleObject simple = null;
      simple = (SimpleObject)Activator.GetObject( typeof(SimpleObject), "http://localhost/WebRemoting/Simple.rem");
      string ret = null;
      ret = simple.ConCatString( "using the", "Web for remoting.");

Figure 25.16: WebClientExe Output

Conclusion

Hope this article would have helped you in understanding Remoting over the Web. See other articles on the website on .NET and C#.

The Complete Visual C# Programmer's Guide covers most of the major components that make up C# and the .net environment. The book is geared toward the intermediate programmer, but contains enough material to satisfy the advanced developer.