WCF, Client-Side Dynamic Proxies and Configuration

Today I ran into another interesting feature of WCF. Let’s say I’m making a client-side proxy dynamically through the ChannelFactory object:

using (ChannelFactory<IMyService> factory =
  new ChannelFactory<IMyService>())
{
  IMyService channel = factory.CreateChannel();
}

The client connection information was in the configuration file:

<system.serviceModel>
  <client>
    <endpoint address="net.msmq://localhost/private/SomeQueue"
      binding="netMsmqBinding"
      contract="ServiceDomain.IMyService" />
  </client>
</system.serviceModel>

I was getting an error: “The Address property on ChannelFactory.Endpoint was null. The ChannelFactory’s Endpoint must have a valid Address specified.” Which was really confusing the hell out of me, as the address was clearly stated in the configuration file. After a lot of futzing, I found an article, which finally showed me the error of my ways:

The ChannelFactory class shown in Listing 10 enables you to create a proxy on the fly. You need to provide the constructor with the endpoint-either the endpoint name from the config file or the binding and the address objects, or an endpoint object.

In other words, I needed to do this:

using (ChannelFactory<IMyService> factory =
  new ChannelFactory<IMyService>(string.Empty))
{
  IMyService channel = factory.CreateChannel();
}

… and all was well with the world again.

Published: 01.22.2007 11:59:31 AM CST

This site is open source. Improve this page.

Jason Bock

WCF, Client-Side Dynamic Proxies and Configuration