Using WCF without configuration files

I have recently published new project on GitHub, WcfWithoutConfigFile. This post is intended as a ‘readme’ file for this repository.

It’s just a collection of simple projects that I’ve put together when a coworker asked me to show how he can use WCF without configuration files. He got feed up working with XML in web.config and wanted a cleaner and more understandable way to configure Windows Communication Foundation.

What’s in:

• How to use WCF in your unit tests (WcfWithoutConfigFile.Tests project). Sometimes you want to get your code tested at service boundaries and you want to involve also WCF. It contains, among a simple unit test, a base class for your tests so the test cases are clean and don’t contain plumbing code.
• Hosting WCF services in IIS (WcfWithoutConfigFile.WebHost project). Defining the service in .svc files and all required infrastructure to instantiate the service via code-only configuration.
• My favorite – hosting WCF service in IIS using Castle’s WcfIntegration facility (WcfWithoutConfigFile.WebHost.Castle project). It leverages Castle Windsor container and WcfFacility to easily host/run/consume your WCF services. It also configures the service to use Windows authentication and shows how to retrieve client’s WindowsIdentity in the service. There is also a client project, WcfWithoutConfigFile.WebHost.Castle-Client that connects to service and does some operations.

WcfWithoutConfigFile.WebHost.Castle requires some configuration to get it working properly. Be sure to:

• Run it in IIS Express
• Enable Windows Authentication in project properties