WCF to build SOAP based service

Question

I am trying to find some good tutorials that would show me to create a simple SOAP based service using WCF and deploy it. I have been googling for the past 2 hour and can\'t

Answer 1

REST / SOAP endpoints for a WCF service

You can expose the service in two different endpoints. the SOAP one can use the binding that support SOAP e.g. basicHttpBinding, the RESTful one can use the webHttpBinding. I assume your REST service will be in JSON, in that case, you need to configure the two endpoints with the following behaviour configuration

<endpointBehaviors>
<behavior name="jsonBehavior">
<enableWebScript/>
</behavior>
</endpointBehaviors>

An example of endpoint configuration in your scenario is

<services>
<service name="TestService">
<endpoint address="soap" binding="basicHttpBinding" contract="ITestService"/>
<endpoint address="json" binding="webHttpBinding"  behaviorConfiguration="jsonBehavior" contract="ITestService"/>
</service>
</services>

so, the service will be available at

http://www.example.com/soap http://www.example.com/json Apply [WebGet] to the operation contract to make it RESTful. e.g.

public interface ITestService { [OperationContract] [WebGet] string HelloWorld(string text) }

Note, if the REST service is not in JSON, parameters of the operations can not contain complex type. For plain old XML as return format, this is an example that would work both for SOAP and XML.

[ServiceContract(Namespace = "http://test")]
public interface ITestService
{
[OperationContract]
[WebGet(UriTemplate = "accounts/{id}")]
Account[] GetAccount(string id);
}

POX behavior for REST Plain Old XML

<behavior name="poxBehavior">
  <webHttp/>
</behavior>

Endpoints

<services>
<service name="TestService">
<endpoint address="soap" binding="basicHttpBinding" contract="ITestService"/>
<endpoint address="xml" binding="webHttpBinding"  behaviorConfiguration="poxBehavior" contract="ITestService"/>
</service>
</services>

Service will be available at

http://www.example.com/soap http://www.example.com/xml
REST request try it in browser,
http://www.example.com/xml/accounts/A123

SOAP request client endpoint configuration for SOAP service after adding the service reference,

<client>
<endpoint address="http://www.example.com/soap" binding="basicHttpBinding"
  contract="ITestService" name="BasicHttpBinding_ITestService" />

in C#

TestServiceClient client = new TestServiceClient();
client.GetAccount("A123");

Another way of doing it is to expose two different service contract and each one with specific configuration. This may generate some duplicates at code level, however at the end of the day, you want to make it working.

Answer 2

As for resources: there's the MSDN WCF Developer Center which has everything from beginner's tutorials to articles and sample code.

Also, check out the screen cast library up on MSDN for some really useful, 10-15 minute chunks of information on just about any topic related to WCF you might be interested in.

Also very good are The Service Station articles in MSDN magazine on various aspects of WCF - some more basic like Serialization in WCF or WCF Bindings in Depth, some more advanced and esoteric - but always worth a look!

Update: for learning WCF and SOAP, check out e.g.

• Getting Started Tutorial
• First Steps Screencast about WCF (using SOAP!)

and a great many more - there are a ton of tutorial and learnings materials on WCF using SOAP bindings - not just REST stuff for sure!

Answer 3

WCF is a technology for building services. It does not assume that the services are SOAP services or RESTFul or anything else. You have to learn WCf basics such as Service and DataContracts, Endpoints, Bindings etc to be able to work with any kind of service.

The links given marc_s are very helpful for that.

Now as far as SOAP is concerned, it is a format\technology used to transport messages from one endpoint to another. This details is covered by the Binding aspect of the WCF. When you expose and consume services you just have to choose a Binding which uses SOAP.

Hence, you should, using links given by marc_s, learn WCF basics to build a service. Then you will know how to build a service and which binding to choose to use SOAP.

Hope this helps.