I’ve already got a post on WCF basics, but I had to quickly knock together a WCF service and client to try something out today and I thought it’d be useful to list the steps to create a real bare bones service and client in a single post.

Let’s begin with the service itself. I want to create a self hosted service running from a console app. so I can easily debug and control everything, so

1. Open a new instance of Visual Studio
2. Create a new console application.
3. Copy the following into the Main method

ServiceHost serviceHost = new ServiceHost(typeof(MyService));
serviceHost.Open();
Console.WriteLine("Service Running");
Console.ReadLine();
serviceHost.Close();

4. Add the reference to System.ServiceModel as well as a valid app.config. For example

<system.serviceModel>
   <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
         <behavior name="">
            <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="false" />
            <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false" />
         </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
   </behaviors>
   <services>
      <service name="WcfTest.MyService">
         <endpoint address="" binding="netTcpBinding" bindingConfiguration=""
                   contract="WcfTest.IMyService">
            <identity>
               <dns value="localhost" />
             </identity>
         </endpoint>
         <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexTcpBinding" bindingConfiguration=""
                    contract="IMetadataExchange" />
         <host>
            <baseAddresses>
               <add baseAddress="net.tcp://localhost:8732/MyService/" />
            </baseAddresses>
         </host>
      </service>
   </services>
</system.serviceModel>  

5. Create an interface with at least one method, as we’re calling the service MyService, let’s call the interface IMyService. You’ll need at least one method and the interface shold have a ServiceContract attribute and the method have an OperationContract, for example

[ServiceContract]
public interface IMyService
{
   [OperationContract]
   void SayHello(string name);
}

6. Implement the interface for example

public class MyService : IMyService
{
   public void SayHello(string name)
   {
      Console.WriteLine("Hello " + name);
   }
}

6. Run the application

Now to the client…

1. Open a new instance of Visual Studio
2. Create a console application
3. Add a service reference (use the url from the server, i.e. net.tcp://localhost:8732/MyService/mex from the service’s app.config)
4. Click Go
5. Click OK
6. Finally add the following code into the Main method

var client = new MyServiceClient();
client.SayHello("Scooby Doo");
client.Close();

Now we have a working service and client.