How to debug CustomServiceHostFactory in WCF? - wcf

Question

I've recently implemented a CustomServiceHostFactory and am wondering how to debug it by hitting breakpoints in code. Here is the factory:
public class CustomHostFactory : ServiceHostFactory
{
protected override ServiceHost CreateServiceHost(Type serviceType, Uri[] baseAddresses)
{
ServiceHost host = new ServiceHost(serviceType, baseAddresses);
//configure WsHttpBinding
ConfigureServiceThrottling(host);
return host;
}
private void ConfigureWshttpBinding(ServiceHost host)
{
//Do something here....
}
private void ConfigureServiceThrottling(ServiceHost host)
{
ServiceThrottlingBehavior throttle = host.Description.Behaviors.Find<ServiceThrottlingBehavior>();
if (throttle == null)
{
throttle = new ServiceThrottlingBehavior
{
MaxConcurrentCalls = 100,
MaxConcurrentSessions = 100,
MaxConcurrentInstances = 100
};
host.Description.Behaviors.Add(throttle);
}
}
}
I create this in an empty web project and here are the pertinent Web.config contents.
<service name="Company.Project.Business.Services.AccountService" behaviorConfiguration="MyServiceTypeBehaviors">
<endpoint address=""
binding="basicHttpBinding"
contract="Company.Project.Business.Contracts.Service.IAccountService"/>
<endpoint contract="IMetadataExchange" binding="mexHttpBinding" address="mex" />
</service>
<service name="Company.Project.Business.Services.AccountClassService" behaviorConfiguration="MyServiceTypeBehaviors">
<endpoint address=""
binding="basicHttpBinding"
contract="Company.Project.Business.Contracts.Service.IAccountClassService"/>
<endpoint contract="IMetadataExchange" binding="mexHttpBinding" address="mex" />
</service>
</services>
<serviceHostingEnvironment>
<!-- where virtual .svc files are defined -->
<serviceActivations>
<add service="Company.Project.Business.Services.AccountService"
relativeAddress="AccountService.svc"
factory="Company.Project.WebHost.CustomHostFactory"/>
<add service="Company.Project.Business.Services.AccountClassService"
relativeAddress="AccountClassService.svc"
factory="Company.Project.WebHost.CustomHostFactory"/>
</serviceActivations>
</serviceHostingEnvironment>
I publish this to IIS and can successfully browse to and consume the services. Here is a path to one for example.
http://company.server.local/Project/Account/AccountService.svc
I am now trying to programmatically apply WsHttpBinding with open/close/send timeouts, readerQuotas, etc. I am trying to do this all in code and it would be helpful if I could step into the CustomeHostFactory to debug but have no idea how to do that. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

Ok, I was totally confused here. Instead of trying to attach to the w3wp process, I just set the project with the CustomHostFactory as the startup project in Visual Studio. I put a breakpoint in the protected override ServiceHost CreateServiceHost method.
Then, when I run the project http://localhost:58326/ comes up in a browser. I then had to actually browse to an endpoint like so: http://localhost:58326/Account/AccountService.svc in order to hit the breakpoint.
Now I can debug my programmatic configuration of the service. Hopefully this helps someone else.