Using WCF services remotely - wcf

I have created a simple WCF service by following a MSDN tutorial. I successfully created service and client. But I have a very basic question, that how can I use this service remotely. Foe example my service is hosted on a web server then how can I access and consume it from my PC. I know how to do this with web services but don't know with WCF service as Iam new to WCF. Any tutorial or code sample is appreciated.
Thanks

In your sample you must have specified the address of the service as endpoint.
You just need to modify the address in your app/web.config file and it will start talking to remote service.
See Specifying an Endpoint Address

Once you deploy the WCF service on some remote server all you have to do is to modify the endpoint address of the client to point to this remote address. This will depend on where you have configured the client endpoint. Usually it is done in the app.config/web.config:
<endpoint address="http://someremotedomain/myservice.svc" ...

Related

wcf hosted in a windows service and httpbindings

I'm working on a wcf hosted inside a windows service. It works like a charm but now I need to reserve a specific hostname for this wcf just as IIS does.
To be more clear, my hosted wcf runs on a windows server machine which response to multiple dns name, but I need to let the wcf reachable only from one of these dns. If I was using IIS it would be achievable by setting a specific hostname within the http-bindings settings, but unfortunately, I can't manage my wcf like that.
To your knowledge, is there any way to reserve a specific hostname for a hosted wcf outside IIS?
Thanks in advance!
yes, you could do it by register the http endpoint at kernel level(http.sys) using the following commands
cmd: ***netsh http add urlacl url=http://fqdn:port/urlpath user=serviceaccount***
Then only on that specific dns/hostname, your http service will listen.

Discover locally running WCF from WP7

I have a WCF service running inside Windows Service and it is located on my local network. What I want is to be able to discover WCF from my Silverlight app on my WP7 (on the same network).
I know there a Discovery feature in WCF, however it requires to UDP, which is not supported on WP7. So are there any other ways to discover local WCF?
I also do not know prior to launching WCF the IP address of the WCF service.
The solution I came up with, is to use Sockets as on WP7 they support multicast.
So set up would like this:
Desktop service - Windows Service hosting WCF and small Socket app
which listens on specific port.
WP7 client - before connecting to WCF
a broadcast would be sent using Sockets to find out an IP address of
the machine which runs WCF, when got a response connect to WCF.
For a WCF Service to be referenced in a WP7 project the WCF Service MUST be a BasicEndpoint
You could provide a basic endpoint that exposes a kind of catalog service. It doesn't have to implement UDDI but it could be a custom protocol to suit your needs and return addresses of web services.
This way you only need to know a single address. Of course you can cache returned addresses and query the catalog service only when you are not able to connect.

I can't access wcf service using net.tcp://<servicename>

I'm using IE8 and can't connect to my WCF service using net.tcp. I'm able to access the same service with http binding just fine. I got two binding enabled in app.config (net.tcp, http). Can anyone tell me if there is a settings that I need to set/play with for viewing service using net.tcp in IE.
You cannot connect to a WCF service using the netTcpBinding through IE.
What you need is a "real" WCF client app, or something like WCF Test Client which is shipped with WCF in the box - just find it and start using it!
Make sure you have a HTTP base address, for your service and a mexTcpBinding endpoint.

How to start/stop windows service from a remote machine through WCF service?

I have created a WCF service which is deployed on my local machine. This service exposes one method which start/stop a windows service on my local machine.
On the remote machine I have created a client that consumes the WCF service. When I try to invoke the method which start/stop service exposed from a WCF service , I get InvalidOperationException . I found that this is the Security issue.
Also when I do the same operation (start/stop windows service) on the local machine it works!!
The WCF service is hosted on IIS 7.0 which is using basichttpBinding. Also Anonnymous access is checked. I have also added <identity Impersonate = true > under the web section in the web config file but still no success.
Please help!!
You set impersonation for ASP.NET. Impersonation in WCF uses its own infrastructure. Moreover in WCF client has to allow service to impersonate his identity. Check this simple example.

Auto-resolving a hostname in WCF Metadata Publishing

I am running a self-hosted WCF service. In the service configuration, I am using localhost in my BaseAddresses that I hook my endpoints to. When trying to connect to an endpoint using the WCF test client, I have no problem connecting to the endpoint and getting the metadata using the machine's name. The problem that I run into is that the client that is generated from metadata uses localhost in the endpoint URLs it wants to connect to. I'm assuming that this is because localhost is the endpoint URL published by metadata. As a result, any calls to the methods on the service will fail since localhost on the calling machine isn't running the service.
What I would like to figure out is if it is possible for the service metadata to publish the proper URL to a client depending on the client who is calling it. For example, if I was requesting the service metadata from a machine on the same network as the server the endpoint should be net.tcp://MYSERVER:1234/MyEndpoint. If I was requesting it from a machine outside the network, the URL should be net.tcp://MYSERVER.mydomain.com:1234/MyEndpoint. And obviously if the client was on the same machine, THEN the URL could be net.tcp://localhost:1234/MyEndpoint.
Is this just a flaw in the default IMetadataExchange contract? Is there some reason the metadata needs to publish the information in a non-contextual way? Is there another way I should be configuring my BaseAddresses in order to get the functionality I want?
Thanks,
Mike
What .NET version are you using? If you're using .NET 4.0, add the UseRequestHeadersForMetadataAddressBehavior to your service host:
UseRequestHeadersForMetadataAddressBehavior urh =
new UseRequestHeadersForMetadataAddressBehavior();
serviceHost.Description.Behaviors.Add(urh);
Obviously, this needs to be done prior to opening the service host.
If you're using .NET 3.5, there's a hotfix that adds this behavior: support.microsoft.com/kb/971842.