Can WCF Self-hosting service have initialization logic?

Question

I have created a WCF Service Library in VS2010 and can run the service by selecting Debug->Start New Instance from project's right click menu.

Can I further define some initialization logic that would be executed before the service is started?

EDIT:

What I try to achieve is to initialize NHibernate and several other elements so that they are ready when the service starts.

Answer 1

If you self-host (i.e. write your WCF host yourself) - sure, no problem, do whatever you need to do before you call .Open() on the ServiceHost.

ServiceHost host = new ServiceHost(typeof(YourServiceClass));

// do your initialization here
........

host.Open();

If you're using IIS or WAS or AppFabric to host your WCF service: I doubt it, since those are "message-based" activation server, e.g. they start up a service host to handle a request on demand, when a request comes in, and I'm not aware of any extension points to get into the initialization process if you're using the regular ServiceHost class for hosting.

That said: you can of course define your own descendants of ServiceHost - derive your custom service host from ServiceHost or ServiceHostBase - those should give you points to get into the initialization process (overriding the InitializeRuntime method, or responding to the Opening event).

See the MSDN docs on:

• ServiceHostBase abstract base class for custom service hosts
• ServiceHost as a concrete implementation of ServiceHostBase to possibly inherit from
• Custom Service Host explaining the ins and outs of how to achieve this all