How to consume Service Fabric service in an MVC Application?

Service Fabric is a great tool for implementing Microservices pattern and ASP.NET MVC is a great framework for websites. How to connect these two? There are different ways you can remotely call a service from Service Fabric. In this blog, I’ll explore one of them.

This blog is using the sample that is covered in my other blog:Is Service Fabric slow for development? There’s a way to make it faster.

The full code for it is in this Git repository: https://github.com/tachev/ServiceFabricStandalone.git

To expose the service is pretty easy. All you need is to add a reference to these packages and to override one method:

<package id="Microsoft.ServiceFabric.Services.Remoting" version="2.8.211" targetFramework="net461" />
<package id="Microsoft.ServiceFabric.FabricTransport.Internal" version="2.8.211" targetFramework="net461" />

protected override IEnumerable<ServiceReplicaListener> CreateServiceReplicaListeners()
{
	return new[] { new ServiceReplicaListener(context => this.CreateServiceRemotingListener(context)) };
}

In the website project there is a little bit more setup, but after that, it’s pretty simple.

1. Add helper classes for MVC
   • UsersStateServiceExtensions – This class is used to simplify adding the service in the Startup class. All you need is adding this code to the ConfigureServices method:

     services.AddUsersService();

     public static class UsersStateServiceExtensions
     {
         public static IServiceCollection AddUsersStateService(this IServiceCollection services)
         {
             if (services == null)
             {
                throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(services));
             }
     
             #if STANDALONE
             //Register standalone services
             Microsoft.ServiceFabric.Services.Runtime.ServiceRuntime.RegisterServiceAsync("UsersStateServiceType",
                         context => new UsersStateService.UsersStateService(context)).GetAwaiter().GetResult();
             #endif
             return services.AddSingleton<IUsersStateService, ServiceFabricUsersStateService>();
          }
     }
     

   • ServiceFabricUsersStateService – This class implements the proxy pattern, and it ensures creating a new service instance per each request.
2. Update the Controllers
   • Use dependency injection to get a reference to the UsersStateService:

     private readonly IUsersStateService userStateService;
     		
     public HomeController(IUsersStateService userStateService)
     {
     	this.userStateService = userStateService;
     }
     

   • Send the current state to the view and update the state:

     public async Task<IActionResult> Index()
     {
     	ViewData["State"] = await userStateService.GetUserStateAsync();
     	await userStateService.SetUserStateAsync("Last visited page was Index");
     		
     	return View();
     }

   • Update the views to show the state:

     <p>State: @ViewData["State"] </p>
     

Let me know if you have any questions or comments on how I can improve the blog and/or the source code.

Thanks,
George