how to bind WCF service to IP address

Question

Hello everyone,

I am developing a WCF service hosted by IIS, using VSTS2008 + C# + .Net 3.5. I find when reference the service from a client by using Add Service Reference..., client has to be able to resolve the machine name to IP address, because WSDL reference some schema file by machine name. Here is an example of a part of WSDL file, in order to parse WSDL file from client side to generate proxy, we have to be able to resolve machine name testmachine1 to related IP address,

<xsd:import schemaLocation="http://testmachine1/service.svc?xsd=xsd1" 
     namespace="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/"/&gt;

My question is, for some reason machine name cannot be resolved all the time (for non-technical reasons), so I want to bind to IP address of the hosting IIS server. Is it possible? If yes, appreciate if anyone could advise. Here is my current WCF web.config file, I want to know how to modify it to enable it to work with IP address,

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <system.serviceModel>
    <services>
      <service behaviorConfiguration="Foo.WCF.ServiceBehavior"
        name="Foo.WCF.CustomerManagement">
        <endpoint address="" binding="basicHttpBinding" 
                  contract="Foo.WCF.ICustomerManagement">
          <identity>
            <dns value="localhost" />
          </identity>
        </endpoint>
        <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" 
                  contract="IMetadataExchange" />
      </service>
    </services>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="Foo.WCF.ServiceBehavior">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false"/>
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
  </system.serviceModel>
</configuration>

thanks in advance, George

Answer 1

If your WCF service is hosted in IIS, you cannot set a separate address. You must use the URL of the virtual directory where your SVC file lives - either with a machine name (http://yourserver/virtualdir/myservice.svc) or an IP (http://123.123.123.123/virtualdir/myservice.svc).

If you use the IP to add the service reference, that IP will be used in the WSDL generated by the service import.

If you host the WCF service yourself (Windows service, console app), you can set the service address in config, and use either machine name or IP for the machine.

Marc

Answer 2

I was having this same issue and seen your post while looking for answers to my own problem.

I think I may have found a solution, which was to change the IIS site binding to be that of the ip. I still don't understand why this can't be a setting in the .config file.

Here is the link to the solution that I found (http://blogs.msdn.com/wenlong/archive/2007/08/02/how-to-change-hostname-in-wsdl-of-an-iis-hosted-service.aspx).

Here is a link to my post on my issue (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1925519/net-wcf-service-references-use-server-name-rather-than-ip-causing-issues-when-co).

Here is a link to my post about finding the solution (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1941900/wcf-hosting-service-in-iis-machine-name-automattically-being-picked-up-by-wcf).