How to create an object from a DLL and call one of its methods with edge.js?

Question

I'm currently examining the possibilities of edge.js because it would greatly help us with our current project. What I need is this: I do have a C# DLL (compiled for 4.5.1) that we use in our standard C# applications. This DLL contains a TcpMessageListener class that I would usually instantiate and use like that (in a Windows Forms, for example):

using MyAssembly.Tools;

namespace MyApplication
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        TcpMessageListener myListener;

        public Form1()
        {
            myListener = new TcpMessageListener();
            myListener.Port = 22222;
            myListener.MessageReceived += new EventHandler<MessageEventArgs>(MessageReceived);
            myListener.Start();
        }

        public void MessageReceived(Object sender, MessageEventArgs e)
        {
        [...] // My message handling code here
        }
    }
}

The code above usually creates a listener when the application starts up and starts listening on the given port (which I can quickly check with netstat or similar).

Now I want to make the same thing happen when I run my node code, but I somehow miss the point and do not get on track. I should add that I am completely new to node.js and just diving into it, please be patient with me.

From what I've seen in all the samples on the edge.js site, I tried it like this:

var http = require('http');
var port = process.env.port || 1337;

var listen = require('edge').func({
    assemblyFile: 'dll\\MyAssembly.dll',
    typeName: 'MyAssembly.Tools.TcpMessageListener',
    methodName: 'Start'
});

listen(null, true);

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
    console.log(req.url);
    res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
    res.end('Hello World\n');
}).listen(port);

But there are two issues: first of all the code above obviously does not seem to create an instance of the listener, but I could not figure out how I would create an instance of the TcpMessageListener class and then call its Start() method.

From the given code, how would you create a listener and make it listen on a given port in the background with node.js and edge.js? I feel like I just need a stable starting point before going deeper.

(The final goal would be a background listener that receives certain messages. When a message is received, the web user should be presented the last received message content instead of the "Hello World". I think I could figure out everything else from there on.)

Answer 1

Try this: I was having similar issues (and still having some), but you may need to store your .NET objects in a static object because edge will lose context after a call: http://mcluck90.tumblr.com/post/89814519378/getting-started-with-edge-js