Create your first webservice

Step 1: Install ServiceStack

To install ServiceStack, you have two options to get the binaries:

• NuGet

Tip: You can find an explanation about all NuGet packages which ServiceStack offers here. The package above only adds the binaries, but there also exist some packages which add the required configurations etc.

• Download them here and add them manually to the project.

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After you've added the binaries, you need to register ServiceStack in web.config:

If you want to host ServiceStack at root path (/), you should use this configuration:

<system.web>
  <httpHandlers>
    <add path="*" type="ServiceStack.WebHost.Endpoints.ServiceStackHttpHandlerFactory, ServiceStack" verb="*"/>
  </httpHandlers>
</system.web>

<!-- Required for IIS 7.0 -->
<system.webServer>
  <handlers>
    <add path="*" name="ServiceStack.Factory" type="ServiceStack.WebHost.Endpoints.ServiceStackHttpHandlerFactory, ServiceStack" verb="*" preCondition="integratedMode" resourceType="Unspecified" allowPathInfo="true" />
  </handlers>
</system.webServer>

Step 2: Create your first webservice

If Global.asax.cs doesn't already exist you have to add it manually. To do this Right-click on your project and go Add -> New Item, then select the Global Application class.

Each service in ServiceStack consists of three parts:

• Request DTO
• Service implementation
• Response DTO

That's the core philosophy in ServiceStack. Each service has a strongly-typed, code-first (normal POCOs) request DTO and response DTO. You can read a detailed explanation what advantages exist if you're using DTOs in the ReadMe or in Why should I use ServiceStack?.

1. Create the name of your Web Service (i.e. the Request DTO)

public class Hello
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

2. Define what your Web Service will return (i.e. Response DTO)

public class HelloResponse
{
    public string Result { get; set; }
}

3. Create your Web Service implementation

public class HelloService : IService<Hello>
{
    public object Execute(Hello request)
    {
        return new HelloResponse { Result = "Hello, " + request.Name };
    }
} 

Step 3: Registering your web services and starting your application

The final step is to configure setup to tell ServiceStack where to find your web services. To do that, add this code to your Global.asax.cs:

public class Global : System.Web.HttpApplication
{
    public class HelloAppHost : AppHostBase
    {
        //Tell Service Stack the name of your application and where to find your web services
        public HelloAppHost() : base("Hello Web Services", typeof(HelloService).Assembly) { }

        public override void Configure(Container container)
        {
            //register user-defined REST-ful urls
            Routes
              .Add<Hello>("/hello")
              .Add<Hello>("/hello/{Name}");
        }
    }

    //Initialize your application singleton
    protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        new HelloAppHost().Init();
    }
}

Done! You now have a working application :)

As you can see, you have created an AppHost. Mainly all configuration related to ServiceStack is made in the AppHost. It's the starting point in your application.

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Now that you have a working Web Service lets see what ServiceStack does for you out of the box:

If everything is configured correctly you can go to the /metadata to see a list of your web services and the various end points its available on.

Let's access the HelloWorld service you created in your browser, so write the following URL in your address bar:

GET /hello/YourName eg http://www.servicestack.net/ServiceStack.Hello/servicestack/hello/Max.

As you can see after clicking on this link, ServiceStack also contains a HTML response format, which makes the XML/Json (...) output human-readable. To change the return format to Json, simply add ?format=json to the end of the URL. You'll learn more about formats, endpoints (URLs, etc) when you continue reading the documentation.