How to produce XML output using WCF service?

Question

I\'ve set up the following interface.

[ServiceContract]
public interface IService1
{
  [OperationContract]
  String Ping();
}

Its implement

Answer 1

If you define your service endpoint as a WebHttp endpoint (a.k.a. REST endpoint), you'll get what you want. The easiest way to do that is to use the WebServiceHostFactory in your svc file:

Service1.svc.

<%@ ServiceHost Language="C#" Debug="true" Service="YourNamespace.Service1"
                Factory="System.ServiceModel.Activation.WebServiceHostFactory" %>

Or you can define the endpoint without the factory, by defining that it will use the webHttpBinding and have a behavior:

Update: Since some people were having issues, I wrote a full example of using XMLHttpRequest to talk to the service listed above. The code can be found at https://github.com/carlosfigueira/WCFQuickSamples/tree/master/WCFForums/QuickWebCode1 (look for StackOverflow_13345557), and it's mostly listed here.

Service code (notice that I'm using JSON as the response, but XML works just as well):

namespace StackOverflow_13345557
{
    [ServiceContract]
    public interface IService1
    {
        [WebGet(ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)]
        string Ping();
        [WebGet(ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)]
        string PingWithParameters(int a, string b);
    }

    public class Service1 : IService1
    {
        public string Ping()
        {
            return "Hello";
        }

        public string PingWithParameters(int a, string b)
        {
            return string.Format("Hello {0} - {1}", a, b);
        }
    }
}

.SVC file - notice no usage of the Factory attribute, since I'm defining the endpoint via configuration:

<%@ ServiceHost Language="C#" Debug="true" Service="StackOverflow_13345557.Service1"
                CodeBehind="StackOverflow_13345557.svc.cs" %>

web.config:

HTML page accessing service (body only):

One more update: added a self-contained, minimal project at https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=99984BBBEC66D789!6355 with the code listed above.