How to best expose methods in WinForm?

Question

I have a C# form application that connects to a electronic device using the serial port. The class "'SerialCommunicationManager'" hooks up to the serial port on application startup and handles the dirty business of talkning to the device.

What I would like is to expose the following methods.

• Write()
• SerialDataReceived event
• SerialDataTransmitted event

Primarily a local website running on the same machine is the one I want to expose the methods for, but in the future I imagine the need for external applications as well.

What is the easiest way to expose the functionality?

• TCPIP client server?
• Web service? (Can I create a web service inside a WinForm?)
• other?

Big thanks

//David

Answer 1

I would recommend self-hosting a WCF Service . This provides you a huge amount of flexibility in terms of how you serve and expose this information, including being able to change the method by which its served via configuration.

Answer 2

It seems to me, that if you would like to do it properly, you should break apart your forms app, and create:

• a service that handles serial comm and has an API exposed through remoting
• a Forms app that uses the API and makes a way with the service

Then, depending on the locality of your web site, if it will remain local (or near local - LAN):

• web site should use remoting to call the service

else, if you plan to have multiple web sites:

• web service hosted inside the IIS that will wrap remoting API
• web site that will use web service

However, if it is too much work to do - just use remoting and expose needed methods to the web site.

Answer 3

In a recent project we did the following:

• Write a Console application (or Windows Service, depending on your needs) that communicates with the electronic device.
• Make the Console application host a .NET 4 WCF service.
• Write a .NET 2 Windows Forms application to communicate through Web Services with the console application.

In this context, I could imagine the website you are mentioning to also use Web Services (WSDL) to communicate with the Console application.