CODEWITHSUNDEEP
wcfasmx
tuseau
tuseau

Reputation: 1393

Does a WCF service always use an svc file?

I'm converting my asmx web services to WCF. Does this inherently mean the file type needs to change from .asmx to .svc?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 6302

Answers (1)

Cybermaxs
Cybermaxs

Reputation: 24558

Every WCF service needs to have a host process : a windows service,IIS or any other .NET program. This host will create an instance of the System.ServiceModel.ServiceHost (or any custom System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase) and will manage the service configurations, behaviors, channels.

However, when a service is hosted in IIS it behaves a little bit differently. By default, we need to create a physical file with .svc extension. It's a pure IIS requirement. There's a module within IIS that handles the .svc file type. This file is just a declaration of the service type and optionnaly service host factory type.

<%@ ServiceHost Language="C#" Debug="true" Factory="System.ServiceModel.Activation.ServiceHostFactory" Service="MyFamousCalculatorService" CodeBehind="MyFamousCalculatorService.svc.cs" %>

Since WCF 4.0, we can create and deploy services in IIS without a physical .svc file.This can be done using the serviceActivations configuration in the system.serviceModel configuration section.

<configuration>
  <system.serviceModel>
    <serviceHostingEnvironment>
      <serviceActivations>
        <add relativeAddress="MyFamousCalculatorService.svc" service="MyFamousCalculatorService"/>
      </serviceActivations>
    </serviceHostingEnvironment>
  </system.serviceModel>
</configuration>

Upvotes: 10

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