Chapter 1, Building OData Services, introduces how we can use WCF Data Services to create OData services based on various kind of data sources such as ADO.NET Entity Framework, LINQ to SQL, and custom data objects.

Chapter 2, Working with OData at Client Side, shows how to consume OData services in client applications. This will cover how we can use strong-typed client proxy, WebRequest class, and unmanaged code to access OData services. You will also learn how to use OData query options, asynchronous query methods, and other client-side OData programming features.

Chapter 3, OData Service Hosting and Configuration, discusses some typical OData service hosting scenarios including IIS hosting, custom .NET application hosting, and Windows Azure cloud hosting. This chapter also covers some service configuration scenarios such as applying basic access rules, exposing error details, and enabling HTTP compression.

Chapter 4, Using OData in Web Application, talks about how to take advantage of OData services for developing various data-driven web applications including ASP.NET Web Form application, ASP.NET MVC application, Silverlight web application, AJAX style web application, and PHP web application.

Chapter 5, OData on Mobile Devices, demonstrates how to use OData services in mobile application development. Recipes in this chapter will cover the most popular mobile device platforms including iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7.

Chapter 6, Working with Public OData Producers, introduces some existing public products and services, which have adopted OData for exposing application data. The recipes in this chapter will demonstrate how to create client applications to consume data from these public OData producers.

Chapter 7, Working with Security, discusses some common and easy-to-use means for securing OData services. Topics covered in this chapter include applying Windows authentication, applying ASP.NET Forms authentication, using HTTPS transport, and implementing custom authentication/authorization code logic.

Chapter 8, Other OData Programming Tips, explores some trivial but useful OData programming topics. You will learn how to use some existing tools for testing and debugging OData services. This chapter also demonstrates how to consume OData services in Windows PowerShell scripts and Windows 8 Metro style applications.

Chapter 9, New Features of WCF Data Service 5.0 (OData V3), demonstrates some of the new features introduced in WCF Data Service 5.0 (OData V3). The new features covered in this chapter include geospatial types, "Any" and "All" query operators, Dynamic entity set URI resolving, Named Resource Stream, and custom Service Actions.

All the recipes in this book are based on the .NET C# programming language. However, you don't have to be a very experienced C# Developer. In order to follow the recipes and run the corresponding sample code, you need a test environment with the following items:

For other software or components required by some specific recipes, they will be listed as prerequisites in the Getting ready section of the relevant recipe.

If you are a .NET Developer and you want to learn how to use OData in real-world data access application development using a quick and efficient approach, then this book is for you. With this book you will be able to find quick and handy solutions for various kind of OData programming scenarios using Microsoft .NET Framework. To follow the recipes, you will need to be comfortable with .NET Framework, Visual Studio IDE, C# programming language, and the basics of web programming such as HTTP, XML, and JSON.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "Finally, it comes to the FileEntity class."

A block of code is set as follows:

public partial class InitSession : System.Web.UI.Page
{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (Session.Count == 0)
{
Session.Add("string item", "some text");
Session.Add("int item", 120);
Session.Add("boolean item", true);
Session.Add("date item", DateTime.Now);
Session.Add("array item", new int[]{1,2,3});
}
}
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

namespace ODataEFService
{
public class NWDataService : DataService< ODataEFService.NorthwindEntities >
{
public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config)
{
config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2;
config.SetEntitySetAccessRule ("*", EntitySetRights.All);
}
}
}

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

DataSvcUtil.exe /in:Northwind.edmx /out:NWDataServiceProxy.cs

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Specify the necessary publish options in the Publish Web dialog."

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