EndPoint
WCF Service is a program that exposes a collection of Endpoints. Each Endpoint is a portal for communicating with the world.
All the WCF communications are take place through end point. End point consists of three components.
Address
Basically URL, specifies where this WCF service is hosted .Client will use this url to connect to the service. e.g http://localhost:8090/MyService/SimpleCalculator.svc
Binding
Binding will describes how client will communicate with service. There are different protocols available for the WCF to communicate to the Client. You can mention the protocol type based on your requirements.
A binding has several characteristics, including the following:
- Transport -Defines the base protocol to be used like HTTP, Named Pipes, TCP, and MSMQ are some type of protocols.
- Encoding (Optional) - Three types of encoding are available-Text, Binary, or Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM). MTOM is an interoperable message format that allows the effective transmission of attachments or large messages (greater than 64K).
- Protocol(Optional) - Defines information to be used in the binding such as Security, transaction or reliable messaging capability
The following table gives some list of protocols supported by WCF binding.
| Binding |
Description |
| BasicHttpBinding |
Basic Web service communication. No security by default |
| WSHttpBinding |
Web services with WS-* support. Supports transactions |
| WSDualHttpBinding |
Web services with duplex contract and transaction support |
| WSFederationHttpBinding |
Web services with federated security. Supports transactions |
| MsmqIntegrationBinding |
Communication directly with MSMQ applications. Supports transactions |
| NetMsmqBinding |
Communication between WCF applications by using queuing. Supports transactions |
| NetNamedPipeBinding |
Communication between WCF applications on same computer. Supports duplex contracts and transactions |
| NetPeerTcpBinding |
Communication between computers across peer-to-peer services. Supports duplex contracts |
| NetTcpBinding |
Communication between WCF applications across computers. Supports duplex contracts and transactions |
Contract
Collection of operation that specifies what the endpoint will communicate with outside world. Usually name of the Interface will be mentioned in the Contract, so the client application will be aware of the operations which are exposed to the client. Each operation is a simple exchange pattern such as one-way, duplex and request/reply.
Below figure illustrate the functions of Endpoint 
Example:
Endpoints will be mentioned in the web.config file on the created service.
<system.serviceModel>
<services>
<service name="MathService"
behaviorConfiguration="MathServiceBehavior">
<endpoint
address="http://localhost:8090/MyService/MathService.svc" contract="IMathService"
binding="wsHttpBinding"/>
</service>
</services>
<behaviors>
<serviceBehaviors>
<behavior name="MathServiceBehavior">
<serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="True"/>
<serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" />
</behavior>
</serviceBehaviors>
</behaviors>
</system.serviceModel>
Tips!
- Always create the service with Interface->Implementation format, mention the contract in Interface.
- Define the service in Class library and refer the class library in Host project. Don’t use service class in host project.
- Change the instance mode to per call as default.
- Always catch exception using try/catch block and throw exception using FaultException < T >.
- Logging and Include exception should be enable while compiling the project in debug mode. While in production deployment disable the logging and Include exception details.
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