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How to: Create a One-Way Contract

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This topic shows the basic steps to create methods that use a one-way contract. Such methods invoke operations on a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service from a client but do not expect a reply. This type of contract can be used, for example, to publish notifications to many subscribers. You can also use one-way contracts when creating a duplex (two-way) contract, which allows clients and servers to communicate with each other independently so that either can initiate calls to the other. This can allow, in particular, the server to make one-way calls to the client that the client can treat as events. For detailed information about specifying one-way methods, see the IsOneWay property and the OperationContractAttribute class.

For more information about creating a client application for a duplex contract, see How to: Access Services with One-Way and Request-Reply Contracts. For a working sample, see the One-Way sample.

To create a one-way contract

  1. Create the service contract by applying the ServiceContractAttribute class to the interface that defines the methods the service is to implement.

  2. Indicate which methods in the interface a client can invoked by applying the OperationContractAttribute class to them.

  3. Designate operations that must have no output (no return value and no out or ref parameters) as one-way by setting the IsOneWay property to true. Note that the operations that carry the OperationContractAttribute class satisfy a request-reply contract by default because the IsOneWay property is false by default. So you must explicitly specify the value of the attribute property to be true if you want a one-way contract for the method.

Example

The following code example defines a contract for a service that includes several one-way methods. All of the methods have one-way contracts except Equals, which defaults to request-reply and returns a result.

[ServiceContract(Namespace="http://Microsoft.ServiceModel.Samples", SessionMode=SessionMode.Required)]
public interface ICalculatorSession
{
    [OperationContract(IsOneWay=true)]
    void Clear();
    [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)]
    void AddTo(double n);
    [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)]
    void SubtractFrom(double n);
    [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)]
    void MultiplyBy(double n);
    [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)]
    void DivideBy(double n);
    [OperationContract]
    double Equals();
}

<ServiceContract(Namespace:="http://Microsoft.ServiceModel.Samples", SessionMode:=SessionMode.Required)> _
Public Interface ICalculatorSession

    <OperationContract(IsOneWay:=True)> _
    Sub Clear()
    <OperationContract(IsOneWay:=True)> _
    Sub AddTo(ByVal n As Double)
    <OperationContract(IsOneWay:=True)> _
    Sub SubtractFrom(ByVal n As Double)
    <OperationContract(IsOneWay:=True)> _
    Sub MultiplyBy(ByVal n As Double)
    <OperationContract(IsOneWay:=True)> _
    Sub DivideBy(ByVal n As Double)
    <OperationContract()> _
    Function Equal() As Double
End Interface

See also