This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Peter G Provost. Original Post: Fun With WSE 2.0 Feed Title: Peter Provost's Geek Noise Feed URL: /error.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/Rss.aspx Feed Description: Technology news, development articles, Microsoft .NET, and other stuff... Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Peter G Provost Latest Posts From Peter Provost's Geek Noise

My boss has a demo coming up where he wanted to have a little private wireless network (not Internet connected) and he wanted to be able to send IM-like messages to all of the machines. He wanted the little "piece of toast" popup and to be able to send an arbitrary piece of text and a hyperlink.

Also, I've had a couple of WSE2 articles and MSDN TV downloads in my "To Be Reviewed" folder for a while now... why not use WSE2 to build this IM thingy?

I decided to use the WSE 2.0 Messaging API, which is very easy to use. You can literally send a message in less than 10 lines...

private void sendButton_Click(object sender,
System.EventArgs e) { Uri destination = new Uri("soap.tcp://" +
machineNameTextBox.Text + ":8888/WseMessenger"); SoapSender
soapSender = new SoapSender(destination); SoapEnvelope envelope
= new SoapEnvelope(); envelope.Context.Action = "Receiver";
XmlElement body = envelope.CreateBody(); body.InnerText = messageTextBox.Text; soapSender.Send(envelope);
} 

Pretty slick eh? Receiving is a little more complicated only in that you need to derive a new class from SoapReceiver:

using Microsoft.Web.Services; using Microsoft.Web.Services.Messaging; using System; public delegate void MessageReceivedEvent( object sender, 


SoapEnvelope envelope ); 


public class MyReceiver : SoapReceiver { public event MessageReceivedEvent
MessageReceived; protected override void Receive(SoapEnvelope
envelope) { if( MessageReceived != null )
MessageReceived( this, envelope ); } } 

Then from my Receiver Form I just add MyReceiver to the SoapReceivers collection and subscribe to the event:

private void Form1_Load(object sender,
System.EventArgs e) { MyReceiver receiver = new MyReceiver();
receiver.MessageReceived += new MessageReceivedEvent(receiver_MessageReceived);
SoapReceivers.Add( "soap.tcp://" + System.Net.Dns.GetHostName()
+ ":8888/WseMessenger", receiver ); }

Easy as pie! So now the question is... when will WSE 2.0 ship?

PS. This was all moot of course. I came into the office this morning and we decided to go with Microsoft Office Live Communication Server instead. Since we were running on a private little demo network anyway, why not? It was still fun to play around with the Messaging API.

PPS. If you are looking for a "piece of toast" control for C#/.NET, check out TaskbarNotifier by John O'Byrne. It is fully skinnable and very easy to use.