IPC using .NET Core that supports duplex channel or callbacks

Question

I am evaluating .NET Core 2.0 for IPC communication. I found that .NET Core does not support WCF on the server side. What can be used in .NET Core for inter-process communication along with callbacks (for publish-subscribe) model?

Answer 1

If you're ready to go low-level, you can use named pipes, but you'll have to implement publish/subscribe pattern yourself.

At a higher level, you can look into libraries like ZeroMQ/NetMQ - these are very thin layer on top of sockets with support of various patterns (like publish/subscribe).

Even higher level are true message queues - RabbitMQ.

And of course, the native way is Web API using ASP.NET Core.

Answer 2

I had a similar need but the existing solutions out there had too many dependencies for my liking and did not support proper two-way communication.

So I wrote the PipeMethodCalls package:

var pipeServer = new PipeServerWithCallback<IConcatenator, IAdder>(
    new NetJsonPipeSerializer(),
    "mypipe",
    () => new Adder());
await pipeServer.WaitForConnectionAsync();
string concatResult = await pipeServer.InvokeAsync(c => c.Concatenate("a", "b"));

var pipeClient = new PipeClientWithCallback<IAdder, IConcatenator>(
    new NetJsonPipeSerializer(),
    "mypipe",
    () => new Concatenator());
await pipeClient.ConnectAsync();
int result = await pipeClient.InvokeAsync(a => a.AddNumbers(4, 7));

It serializes the method name and arguments as JSON or MessagePack, invokes it on the other side, then packages the response to send back.