C# – Upload Image From iPhone to WCF Service

It's certainly possible to develop on a Windows machine, in fact, my first application was exclusively developed on the old Dell Precision I had at the time :)

There are three routes;

1. Install OSx86 (aka iATKOS / Kalyway) on a second partition/disk and dual boot.
2. Run Mac OS X Server under VMWare (Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) onwards, read the update below).
3. Use Delphi XE4 and the macincloud service. This is a commercial toolset, but the component and lib support is growing.

The first route requires modifying (or using a pre-modified) image of Leopard that can be installed on a regular PC. This is not as hard as you would think, although your success/effort ratio will depend upon how closely the hardware in your PC matches that in Mac hardware - e.g. if you're running a Core 2 Duo on an Intel Motherboard, with an NVidia graphics card you are laughing. If you're running an AMD machine or something without SSE3 it gets a little more involved.

If you purchase (or already own) a version of Leopard then this is a gray area since the Leopard EULA states you may only run it on an "Apple Labeled" machine. As many point out if you stick an Apple sticker on your PC you're probably covered.

The second option is more costly. The EULA for the workstation version of Leopard prevents it from being run under emulation and as a result, there's no support in VMWare for this. Leopard server, however, CAN be run under emulation and can be used for desktop purposes. Leopard server and VMWare are expensive, however.

If you're interested in option 1) I would suggest starting at Insanelymac and reading the OSx86 sections.

I do think you should consider whether the time you will invest is going to be worth the money you will save though. It was for me because I enjoy tinkering with this type of stuff and I started during the early iPhone betas, months before their App Store became available.

Alternatively, you could pick up a low-spec Mac Mini from eBay. You don't need much horsepower to run the SDK and you can always sell it on later if you decide to stop development or buy a better Mac.

Update: You cannot create a Mac OS X Client virtual machine for OS X 10.6 and earlier. Apple does not allow these Client OSes to be virtualized. With Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) onwards, Apple has changed its licensing agreement in regards to virtualization. Source: VMWare KnowledgeBase

You can expose the service in two different endpoints. the SOAP one can use the binding that support SOAP e.g. basicHttpBinding, the RESTful one can use the webHttpBinding. I assume your REST service will be in JSON, in that case, you need to configure the two endpoints with the following behaviour configuration

<endpointBehaviors>
  <behavior name="jsonBehavior">
    <enableWebScript/>
  </behavior>
</endpointBehaviors>

An example of endpoint configuration in your scenario is

<services>
  <service name="TestService">
    <endpoint address="soap" binding="basicHttpBinding" contract="ITestService"/>
    <endpoint address="json" binding="webHttpBinding"  behaviorConfiguration="jsonBehavior" contract="ITestService"/>
  </service>
</services>

so, the service will be available at

• http://www.example.com/soap
• http://www.example.com/json

Apply [WebGet] to the operation contract to make it RESTful. e.g.

public interface ITestService
{
   [OperationContract]
   [WebGet]
   string HelloWorld(string text)
}

Note, if the REST service is not in JSON, parameters of the operations can not contain complex type.

Reply to the post for SOAP and RESTful POX(XML)

For plain old XML as return format, this is an example that would work both for SOAP and XML.

[ServiceContract(Namespace = "http://test")]
public interface ITestService
{
    [OperationContract]
    [WebGet(UriTemplate = "accounts/{id}")]
    Account[] GetAccount(string id);
}

POX behavior for REST Plain Old XML

<behavior name="poxBehavior">
  <webHttp/>
</behavior>

Endpoints

<services>
  <service name="TestService">
    <endpoint address="soap" binding="basicHttpBinding" contract="ITestService"/>
    <endpoint address="xml" binding="webHttpBinding"  behaviorConfiguration="poxBehavior" contract="ITestService"/>
  </service>
</services>

Service will be available at

• http://www.example.com/soap
• http://www.example.com/xml

REST request try it in browser,

http://www.example.com/xml/accounts/A123

SOAP request client endpoint configuration for SOAP service after adding the service reference,

  <client>
    <endpoint address="http://www.example.com/soap" binding="basicHttpBinding"
      contract="ITestService" name="BasicHttpBinding_ITestService" />
  </client>

in C#

TestServiceClient client = new TestServiceClient();
client.GetAccount("A123");

Another way of doing it is to expose two different service contract and each one with specific configuration. This may generate some duplicates at code level, however at the end of the day, you want to make it working.