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c#wcfwcf-data-serviceswcf-binding

Different services on different ports in WCF

I'm in a situation where I want to use WCF to expose two different interfaces:

  • Internal (IPC communication)
  • External (Http REST)

The external interface shouldn't be able to see or use the internal interface so what I was thinking about were to host the two services on different ports e.g. (8000 for internal and 8001 for external) and then block all external communication on port 8000.

Moreover, I tried fiddling around with using named pipes for IPC communication, and I ran into an issue. If the unexpected situation occurs, that the service crashes or goes offline the client would also have to be restarted to be able to establish the communication with the service via the named pipes. Is this normal behavior and can it be avoided?

I have the following code so far:

// Service Host
var host = new ServiceHost(serviceContract, new Uri(_address));
host.Description.Behaviors.Add(new ServiceMetadataBehavior { HttpGetEnabled = true });
var behaviour = host.Description.Behaviors.Find<ServiceBehaviorAttribute>();
behaviour.InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single;

// Local Endpoint
host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(ILocalServiceContract), new BasicHttpBinding(), "Local");
host.AddServiceEndpoint(ServiceMetadataBehavior.MexContractName, MetadataExchangeBindings.CreateMexHttpBinding(), "mex");

// External Endpoint
var webHttpBidning = new WebHttpBinding { TransferMode = TransferMode.Streamed };
var externalEndPoint = host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IExternalServiceContract), webHttpBidning, "External");
externalEndPoint.Behaviors.Add(new WebHttpBehavior());

They are currently both hosted on the same port which I want to avoid, I'm fairly new to WCF and I could really use some guidance for best practice and what I'm doing wrong. As mentioned earlier the 'BasicHttpBinding' could maybe be replaced with a named pipe if my issue can be resolved.

Looking forward to hear to the experts and if you need any clearification feel free to ask :)

Solution

  • I solved the issue with the following code on server. On the clients which communicate with the server via named pipes, I used "WcfClientProxyGenerator" library to generate fault tolerant client proxies.

    _namedPipeAddress = "net.pipe://localhost/";
_httpAddress = "http://localhost:8000";

var host = new ServiceHost(serviceContract, new Uri(_namedPipeAddress), new Uri(_httpAddress));

host.Description.Behaviors.Add(new ServiceMetadataBehavior { });

var behaviour = host.Description.Behaviors.Find<ServiceBehaviorAttribute>();
behaviour.InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single;
behaviour.IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults = true;

// Local Endpoint
host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(ILocalServiceContract), new NetNamedPipeBinding(), "Local");
host.AddServiceEndpoint(ServiceMetadataBehavior.MexContractName, MetadataExchangeBindings.CreateMexNamedPipeBinding(), "mex");

//// External Endpoint
var webHttpBidning = new WebHttpBinding { TransferMode = TransferMode.Streamed };
var externalEndPoint = host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IExternalServiceContract), webHttpBidning, new Uri(_httpAddress));
externalEndPoint.Behaviors.Add(new WebHttpBehavior());

    For further improvements to this solution feel free to comment :)