How to remove thie ".svc" extension in RESTful WCF service?

Question

In my knowledge, the RESTful WCF still has ".svc" in its URL.

For example, if the service interface is like

[OperationContract]
[WebGet(UriTemplate = "/Value/{value}")]
string GetDataStr(string value);

The access URI is like "http://machinename/Service.svc/Value/2". In my understanding, part of REST advantage is that it can hide the implementation details. A RESTful URI like "http://machinename/Service/value/2" can be implemented by any RESTful framework, but a "http://machinename/Service.svc/value/2" exposes its implementation is WCF.

How can I remove this ".svc" host in the access URI?

Answer 1

In IIS 7 you can use the Url Rewrite Module as explained in this blog post.

In IIS 6 you could write an http module that will rewrite the url:

public class RestModule : IHttpModule
{
    public void Dispose() { }

    public void Init(HttpApplication app)
    {
        app.BeginRequest += delegate
        {
            HttpContext ctx = HttpContext.Current;
            string path = ctx.Request.AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath;

            int i = path.IndexOf('/', 2);
            if (i > 0)
            {
                string svc = path.Substring(0, i) + ".svc";
                string rest = path.Substring(i, path.Length - i);
                ctx.RewritePath(svc, rest, ctx.Request.QueryString.ToString(), false);
            }
        };
    }
}

And there's a nice example how to achieve extensionless urls in IIS 6 without using third party ISAPI modules or wildcard mapping.

Answer 2

Its easy on IIS 7 - use a URL Rewrite Module

On IIS 6 I found its easiest to use the ISAPI Rewrite module which lets you define a set of regular expressions that map the request Urls to the .svc file...

Answer 3

Here's more detailed info using the IIS 7 Rewrite Module, or using a custom module: http://www.west-wind.com/Weblog/posts/570695.aspx

Answer 4

In IIS6 or 7, you can use IIRF, a free rewriting filter. Here's the rule I used:

# Iirf.ini
#

RewriteEngine ON
RewriteLog  c:\inetpub\iirfLogs\iirf-v2.0.services
RewriteLogLevel 3
StatusInquiry  ON  RemoteOk
CondSubstringBackrefFlag *
MaxMatchCount 10

# remove the .svc tag from external URLs
RewriteRule  ^/services/([^/]+)(?<!\.svc)/(.*)$    /services/$1.svc/$2  [L]

Answer 5

There is also a way to eliminate the physical .svc files altogether. This can be done with a VirtualPathProvider.

See: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wcf/thread/350f2cb6-febd-4978-ae65-f79735d412db