WCF Configuration Hell?

Question

I hate WCF setup with endpoints, behaviors etc. I believe all these things should be performed automatically. All I want to do is to return JSON result from my WCF service. Here

Answer 1

I personally don't like all of the configuration options that WCF offers (I've ranted about it before), and in your case you don't need to use configuration at all. For a simple service to return JSON, you can use a service host factory, and there's one which does exactly that (set up a webHttpBinding/webHttp behavior endpoint), the System.ServiceModel.Activation.WebServiceHostFactory. In your case, you can:

• Remove everything from config (really, you don't need config at all)
• Update your .svc file to reference that factory (see below)

That's it. Here's what the .svc should look like:

<%@ ServiceHost Language="C#" Service="HighOnCodingWebApps.ZombieService" Factory="System.ServiceModel.Activation.WebServiceHostFactory" %>

One more thing: I noticed that your class isn't decorated with [ServiceContract], but you have a [WebGet] attribute in your method in the class. If the interface (IZombieService) is the one decorated with [ServiceContract], then the method in the interface should be the one decorated with [WebGet]. You can also bypass the interface completely and decorate the ZombieService class with `[ServiceContract] as well.

[ServiceContract]
public class ZombieService
{
    [WebGet(ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json,
            UriTemplate = "KnownZombies")]
    public Zombie GetZombie()
    {
       return new Zombie() { Name = "Mohammad Azam"};
    }
}

public class Zombie
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
}