Displaying WCF Web service operations

Question

So I've created a WCF service application and hosted it on IIS7. It currently has a few test 'helloworld' methods. When I run it in my browser I get this screen:

Now the service itself works great, but how can I display the operations like this:

Thanks to marc_s for the link: http://www.dotnetcurry.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=399 which I've followed so my web config is now setup like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
  <system.web>
    <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" />
  </system.web>
  <system.serviceModel>
    <services>
      <service name="WcfServer.Service1">
        <endpoint address="" binding="webHttpBinding" contract="WcfServer.IService1" behaviorConfiguration="HelpBehaviour" />
      </service>
    </services>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior>
          <!-- To avoid disclosing metadata information, set the value below to false and remove the metadata endpoint above before deployment -->
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" />
          <!-- To receive exception details in faults for debugging purposes, set the value below to true.  Set to false before deployment to avoid disclosing exception information -->
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false" />
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
      <endpointBehaviors>
        <behavior name="AjaxBehavior">
          <enableWebScript />
        </behavior>
        <behavior name="HelpBehaviour">
          <webHttp helpEnabled="true"/>
        </behavior>
      </endpointBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
  </system.serviceModel>
 <system.webServer>
    <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" />
        <directoryBrowse enabled="true" showFlags="Date, Time, Size, Extension" />
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

However, this only works locally. When I publish to my server on IIS7 I get a 404 error page when I click on the help link. Does anyone know why this is, or has come across it before?

(Last bit was solved by running: aspnet_regiis.exe -iru)

Answer 1

If you have a WCF service with a SOAP binding, you're unfortunately out of luck: there's no way in WCF out of the box to get a listing similar to ASMX with all the services.

With REST binding (webHttpBinding) and .NET 4.0, you can have an automatic help page generated which lists the URI templates, the HTTP methods supported and so forth. You can also tweak that page to a certain degree.

In order to have that automatic help page generated, you need to define (and reference) an endpoint behavior:

<behaviors>
   <endpointBehaviors>
       <behavior name="HelpBehavior">
           <webHttp helpEnabled="true" />
       </behavior>
   </endpointBehaviors>
</behaviors>

Then reference that behavior from your webHttpBinding endpoint, and you're done.

Read all about it:

• A Developer's Introduction to Windows Communication Foundation 4
• Windows Communication Foundation 4.0 - New REST Features
• Clients and the Automatic Help Page in WCF WebHttp Services