Microsoft Silverlight Books

VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

Do you want to learn about how to use the REST programming model in WCF 3.5? If you do, then this book is for you! Author Jon Flanders, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that is designed for .NET developers who are familiar with WCF and REST.

Jon Flanders, begins by introducing the basic concepts of REST. Next, the author introduces the WCF channel and programming models. Then, he introduces you to the WebGetAttribute, which is the mechanism for building resources that return read-only representations. He continues by examining the special considerations for hosting this type of endpoint. Next, the author shows you how to build and consume feeds using the WCF feed programming model. Then, he examines WCF 3.5's ability to return data as XML- or JSON-encoded results, as well as the integration between WCF and ASP.NET Ajax. The author continues by examining the WCF settings for enabling security and for creating an endpoint that is highly secure. Next, he focuses on both stateless and stateful workflow models for implementing RESTful services. He continues by taking a look at Restful service, SQL Server Data Services, and decompose it into a WCF service contract that can invoke the service through the WCF programming model. Finally, the author looks at a couple of slightly more advanced HTTP features and how to use them with your RESTful services in WCF.

This most excellent book will help you learn the ways of REST. More importantly, it will show you how to apply them when developing applications and services using .NET and WCF.

John R. Vacca
18 January, 2009

Really good book that goes beyond the basics!

REST support in .Net is built on top of a rich and flexible Windows Communication Foundation infrastructure. This book will guide you through the choices you have when designing APIs for your RESTful services and help you understand potential tradeoffs: for example, should your APIs' return types be strongly typed or plain message objects? what data serializer(s) typically offer the best performance? the most flexibility for xml-formatted message construction? Additionally, the book also provides best practice recommendations for hosting, securing, and configuring deployed services depending on varying requirements. Overall, a really good book that goes beyond the basics!

Techie Evan
29 December, 2008

Concise, clear and lean

There are two things I really liked about Flanders' book:

(1) It has a gradual progression from concept to implementation that is both easy to read and very structured. It made the whole book very valuable. The initial section on REST is concise and either enlightening or revision, depending on what you already know. The transition to WCF programming is just as smooth.

(2) It zeroes in on the essentials and provides very lean tutorials on the meat of implementing RESTful services. This is key because WCF as a technology is fairly dense and sprawling. Flanders starts with a quick tutorial of non-SOAP based web programming using WCF. And he covers both server side API implementation and client side consumption of the same.

RESTful .NET's biggest strength is that it is concise, clear and lean. To that point, you need the basics of HTTP, SOAP, WCF, XML, C# and (briefly) ASP in place.

Aspi Havewala
24 January, 2009

EXCELLENT reference, even if not what I expected

I started reading this book after finishing Data-Driven Services with Silverlight 2 so I was already somewhat familiar with the basic principles of REST services in .NET but wanted more details about the inner workings of REST and specifically the details of configuration within IIS and web.config. Well, this book definitely covers the inner workings of REST within WCF VERY throroughly, but in my opinion, the approach was kind of counter-intuitive. He begins by providing command line examples, and perhaps it is due to my overall lack of experience with WCF, but I couldnt identify with the implementation of such an example, and the details of the web.config setup were only cursorily mentioned--everything was created in code. So, my exact goal was not fully acheived, however, the advantages of this book as a reference greatly outweigh that single disadvantage. The author delves quite deeply into an explanation of behaviors, endpoints, serialization, deserialization, and the URI template syntax -- which basically are the key aspects of REST in WCF.NET. Even without a background in WCF, this book gets you up to speed very quickly.

Jorin M. Slaybaugh
01 June, 2009

EXCELLENT reference, even if not what I expected

I started reading this book after finishing Data-Driven Services with Silverlight 2 so I was already somewhat familiar with the basic principles of REST services in .NET but wanted more details about the inner workings of REST and specifically the details of configuration within IIS and web.config. Well, this book definitely covers the inner workings of REST within WCF VERY throroughly, but in my opinion, the approach was kind of counter-intuitive. He begins by providing command line examples, and perhaps it is due to my overall lack of experience with WCF, but I couldnt identify with the implementation of such an example, and the details of the web.config setup were only cursorily mentioned--everything was created in code. So, my exact goal was not fully acheived, however, the advantages of this book as a reference greatly outweigh that single disadvantage. The author delves quite deeply into an explanation of behaviors, endpoints, serialization, deserialization, and the URI template syntax -- which basically are the key aspects of REST in WCF.NET. Even without a background in WCF, this book gets you up to speed very quickly.

Jorin M. Slaybaugh
01 June, 2009