Adding web service bindings into SharePoint web.config using SPWebConfigModification

Question

This is a solution rather than a question actually. The problem was: I had a SharePoint web part which used a WCF service. To consume the web service in my web part, I needed to modify the SharePoint web.config to include bindings and end points.

To be able to do this, I put my web service configuration into a text file as a template. The text file (BindingTemplate.txt) content is as the following:

<system.serviceModel>
<bindings>
  <basicHttpBinding>
    <binding name="BasicHttpBinding_AuthenticationInterface" closeTimeout="00:10:00" openTimeout="00:10:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:10:00" allowCookies="false" bypassProxyOnLocal="false" hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard" maxBufferSize="65536" maxBufferPoolSize="524288" maxReceivedMessageSize="65536" messageEncoding="Text" textEncoding="utf-8" transferMode="Buffered" useDefaultWebProxy="true">
      <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxStringContentLength="8192" maxArrayLength="16384" maxBytesPerRead="4096" maxNameTableCharCount="16384" />
      <security mode="None">
        <transport clientCredentialType="None" proxyCredentialType="None" realm="" />
        <message clientCredentialType="UserName" algorithmSuite="Default" />
      </security>
    </binding>
  </basicHttpBinding>
</bindings>
<client>
  <endpoint address="http://{0}/MyWebService/AuthenticationService.svc" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="BasicHttpBinding_AuthenticationInterface" contract="AuthenticationService.AuthenticationInterface" name="BasicHttpBinding_AuthenticationInterface" />
</client>

I used the C# following code to modify the web.config:

string content = "";
using (TextReader tr = File.OpenText(bindingFilePath))
{
    content = String.Format(tr.ReadToEnd(), WebServiceServer);
}

SPWebConfigModification modification = new SPWebConfigModification("system.serviceModel", "configuration");
modification.Value = content;
modification.Sequence = 0;
modification.Type =SPWebConfigModification.SPWebConfigModificationType.EnsureChildNode;
modification.Owner = OWNER_CONSTANT;

webApp.WebConfigModifications.Add(modification);

I spent some time figuring it out. Hope this will help someone.