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c#web-serviceswcfiis-express

reference to a WCF service running locally on IIS Express does not expose methods

I've recently inherited a number of WCF webservices that are configured to use an ASHX handler within a web project to render the .SVC files in the form of http://example.com/Services/V1/MyService.svc. The services are running in the dev and production environments, WSDL comes up, and adding a service reference in a new project allows me to call MyMethod and get a response exactly as expected.

The error handling and logging story isn't great, so I'm trying to run the site locally and add a service reference to http://localhost:1234/Services/V1/MyService.svc. I can load the service at that URL and see the same WSDL that appears for the production environment, but when I try to use code similar to what's below to call my method neither the client nor the response objects are recognized the way they are when I connect to production.

using MyServiceTestProject.LOCAL_MyService;
//...
MyServiceClient test = new MyServiceClient();

MyServiceMethodResponse r = test.MyServiceMethod("arguments!");

I am able to see exactly one of the MyCustomObject classes that is only declared within my service and stops being available when I stop using the service reference, so I know that something is coming across even if it's not everything that one would expect.

The relevant parts of the Web.Config files are the same when I compare my local and dev/prod environments, and the project that's running locally is the one that was deployed to those other boxes.

Has anyone encountered this sort of behavior runnning a services project locally using IIS Express?

Edit:. The endpoints are different between the prod, dev, and local environments, using the same code in each one. Thanks for pointing out that detail I'd omitted originally.

Solution

  • After spending several hours on and off trying to solve this before posting the question, deleting and re-adding the service reference and restarting both my IDE and my computer to no avail, I've discovered that right-clicking on the name of the service and selecting "Update Service Reference" (circled in red in the screenshot below) would ultimately fix the problems I was seeing although VS sometimes required me to perform multiple updates before it would work.

    Update Service Reference context menu option

    Without performing the update, neither my attempts to delete and add the service back nor restarting Visual Studio/rebooting my PC would help address the issue. I'm not sure if it's something about IIS Express that causes the service reference to not be created with all of the necessary data the first time around or if it's one of a hundred other variables in my local environment, but at least there's a reliable way to get it working when it does fail.