How to change default WCF page returned in browser?

Question

The old ASP.NET ASMX Web services used to produce a Web page that allowed a user to navigate to the various methods and invoke them (as long as the parameters were all simple types).

WCF web services produce a much less useful page (You have created a service... blah, blah, blah...). My question is two part...

Can I get WCF to produce results like ASMX did?

OR

Can I produce custom HTML that documents my service? If so, How?

This service is a nice example of the kind of thing I'd like to do... http://footballpool.dataaccess.eu/data/info.wso

Answer 1

No, and no.

The service page that WCF produces is hard-wired, and I haven't ever heard of any trick or technique to change it. And no, you cannot get back the old ASMX service page, either.

There's a couple of things you can do:

• based on your WSDL that completely describes your service, you could create an HTML help or man page (or pages) and have those displayed under a static URL (e.g. http://myserver/myservice/helppage.html)

• you could create a totally separate page to describe your service, like the one you linked to, and make that available

Mind you: WCF services are by default SOAP based service calls - you cannot just call those from a web browser.