After lots of struggling and not finding straight forward way, I have found the way as below for someone else in future it might help.
Scenario:
1. Web Farm: Host External User facing Web Pages
2. Backend Process: Which is mix of WebApi, SharePoint, Windows Service etc.
User from Web Page submit some request and get a unique id as return back. Internally on receiving request, we queue that request to Service Bus using TopicClient for processing.
There are pool of Windows Service watching on Message on Service Bus using SubscriptionClient and process that message. On completion of process which can run from 5 seconds to 30 seconds and some cases even more. We need to inform client that its job done if its waiting on web page or waiting for completion notification.
In this story, We are using SignalR to push job completion notification to client.
Now my earlier problem is How I let know from windows service to web application that job is done so send notification to client who submitted request.
One way is we hosted another hub internally in web application, Windows service act as client and call web application hosted hub, and in that hub method it will call external facing hub method to propagate message to specific client who submitted request, for which we are using Single user Group.
And as we have register service bus as backplane it will propagate to other servers and then appropriate client will get notification. So this is ideal solution and should work in most cases.
In above approach we have one limitation that, how Windows Service connect to Web Client, as we donot have windows auth, but we have openid based auth with ADFS. Now in such case Web Application required special code in which provide separate userid or password for windows service to communicate or have windows authentication also allowed for that hub for service account of windows service.
I was trying and trying how to remove all this hopes between interserver communication and again management of extra security.
So I did below with simplicity, though it tooks me whole night to find our internal of SignalR. But it works:
Approach is to send message directly to ServiceBus Backplane, and as all Web Server already hooked-up with ServiceBus backplane then they will get message.
Unfortunately SignalR doesn't provide such mechanism to send message directly to Backplane. I think its on pub/sub model so they don't want somebody to hack in their system :). or its violation of their pattern, but its make sense, in my case because of different roles and security, I have simplify code as below:
- Create a ServiceBusMessageBus instance in my code, Same way as Below: Though I have created separate instance and store till lifetime of Windows Service, so I don't create instance every time:
ServiceBusMessageBus serviceBusBackplane = new ServiceBusMessageBus(new DefaultDependencyResolver(), new ServiceBusScaleoutConfiguration(connectionString, appName));
Create a ClientHubInvocation Object: This is a message which actually get created in SignalR infrastructure when Backplane based message broadcast:
ClientHubInvocation hubData = new ClientHubInvocation
{
Args = new object[] { msg },
Hub = "JobStatusHub",
Method = "onJobStatus",
State = null,
};
Create a Message object which accept by ServiceBusMessageBus.Publish, Yes, so this is a method which actually get called on base class ScaleoutMessageBus.Publish. This class is actually responsible for sending message to topic and other subscribers on other server nodes. Why not use that directly. Now to create Message Object, You need following code:
Message backplaneMessage = new Message(
sourceId,
"hg-JobStatusHub." + name,
new ArraySegment(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(hubData))));
In above second parameter is something interesting,
In case if you want to publish to all the client then syntax is "h-", in my case specific group user, so syntax is "hg-.. You can check the code here: https://github.com/SignalR/SignalR/blob/bc9412bcab0f5ef097c7dc919e3ea1b37fc8718c/src/Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Core/Infrastructure/PrefixHelper.cs
- Publish your message to backplane directly as below:
await serviceBusBackplane.Publish(backplaneMessage);
I wish this PrefixHelper class have been public.
Remember: This is not recommended way and doent insulate from future upgrade for SignalR, as its internal they may change so any upgrade might come with small hazale to change this code. But in summary this works. Hope SignalR Team provide some mechanisam out of box to send message directly to backplane instead.
Thanks