referencing asp.net c# classes/methods in silverlight project

Question

Does anyone know how to do this? I built a backend c# class in asp.net but want to access these same classes without recreating them in silverlight. Is this a possibility?

Answer 1

You can reuse the cs files by adding them to your project AS LINK. Right click in your project and select Add Existing...Browse to your file and in the Open Button, use the pulldown arrow on the right to select Add As Link. You will see the file added to your project with an icon that with the little Windows Shortcut icon overlayed on it.

Just remember - the ASP.Net runs on the .Net runtime. Silverlight runs on the CoreCLR (Silverlight runtime.) Not everything that compiles in oone will compile in the other...

To separate things a little bit, #if directives can help, you can also use Partial Classes and partial methods (to add content that only runs on the server or on the client.)

Answer 2

RIA Services is definitely the way to go for sharing code between ASP.Net and Silverlight.

As well as the previously mentioned generation of domain service models, it also lets you share individual files between the web-app and Silverlight by simply inserting "shared" in to the filenames. eg "MyClass.shared.cs".

RIA services does not take long to get to terms with (and there are good tutorials about). Try this one .

Answer 3

Well, ASP.NET itself isn't going to work (ditto many of the full libraries), but I'm assuming you just mean you local domain model etc.

IIRC you can try to simply reference it, but it may well generate a warning message. Of course you need to be exceptionally careful not to use anything that the other platform doesn't support...

IMO, the better option here is to create a second csproj that includes the same .cs files (or cheat with a wildcard/deep include). And build both. Same C#, different dll/platform.

Is isn't uncommon to find that you need a very small usage of #if directives, too.

Answer 4

WCF RIA Services may help you solve your problem. Silverlight does not use the same runtime as ASP.Net does and you cannot directly share assemblies containing model classes on the client and the server side. To solve that WCF RIA Services will transparently generate classes on the client side based on model classes on the server side. Obviously WCF RIA Services will also allow you to create, read, update and delete objects of these classes using a web service.

MSDN has more specific information about WCF RIA Services Client Code Generation .