A Simple Chat Application Using .NET Remoting

• Download demo project - 26.1 KB

Introduction

The application is a simple chat tool. Anyone who connects to the chat server receives all chat communication between the connected users. The application is deliberately kept simple to clarify .NET remoting. This application also demonstrates event and delegate usage in an application that uses .NET remoting.

Description

Most of you will have noticed that there are wizards to develop ASP.NET web services in Visual Studio .NET. However, if you want to develop a Client/Server application that runs over a local area network, there are no wizards available. This application shows how to do .NET remoting in a Local Area Network. This application acts much like a DCOM server and client application. This Visual Studio .NET solution contains three modules.

1. ChatCoordinator: The server implementation.
2. ChatClient: The client implementation.
3. ChatServer: The runtime host for Chat coordinator.

This uses HTTP protocol schema and sends the messages through an HTTP channel. The remoting configuration is specified in the ChatClient.exe.config file and the ChatServer.exe.config file.

How to Build the Application

• Step-1: Extract the file DotNETChatApplication_demo.zip.
• Step-2: Open the file ChatApplication.sln in Visual studio .NET.
• Step-3: Build the Solution.

How to Run the Application

• Step-1: Locate the folder Output under the project folder.
• Step-2: Run the server application ChatServer.exe.
• Step-3: Run the chat client ChatClient.exe.

This application runs on a single computer or across a network. If you want to run this application over a network, you must replace "localhost" in the client configuration with the name of the remote computer. Modify the following line in Client.exe.config:

<wellknown type="ChatCoordinator.ChatCenter, ChatCoordinator" 
    url="http://localhost:100/ChatServer" />

...to:

<wellknown type="ChatCoordinator.ChatCenter, ChatCoordinator" 
    url="http://your machine name:100/ChatServer" />

Also make sure that the ChatServer.exe is running before you run ChatClient.exe.