CODEWITHSUNDEEP
wcf
Patrick Peters
Patrick Peters

Reputation: 9578

What does ChannelFactory<T>("*") mean?

I use a the ChannelFactory way of communicating with my other business tier.

See this example: http://benmccallum.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/wcf-web-service-wrapper-closing-disposing-and-aborting-best-practices/

What does ChannelFactory("*") mean, I cannot get any information on MSDN about this ?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 146

Answers (1)

Russ Cam
Russ Cam

Reputation: 125498

The * wildcard indicates to use the first qualifying endpoint as you can have more than one endpoint for the same contract. I can't find any reference to this on MSDN, but can see it used internally inside ChannelFactory<T>.InitializeEndpoint(string configurationName, EndpointAddress address). Decompiled using Dotpeek, comments mine

protected void InitializeEndpoint(string configurationName, EndpointAddress address)
{
  this.serviceEndpoint = this.CreateDescription();
  ServiceEndpoint serviceEndpoint = (ServiceEndpoint) null;
  if (configurationName != null)
    // ConfigLoader checks whether the passed configurationName is a wildcard match
    // and uses it when looking up channels from configuration to determine
    // which channel to use
    serviceEndpoint = ConfigLoader.LookupEndpoint(configurationName, address, this.serviceEndpoint.Contract);
  if (serviceEndpoint != null)
  {
    this.serviceEndpoint = serviceEndpoint;
  }
  else
  {
    if (address != (EndpointAddress) null)
      this.Endpoint.Address = address;
    this.ApplyConfiguration(configurationName);
  }
  this.configurationName = configurationName;
  this.EnsureSecurityCredentialsManager(this.serviceEndpoint);
}

Upvotes: 1

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