Hi Guys,
based on the WSDL spec from W3 there is the possibility to add "wsdl:document" tags to the WSDL output so that people using that webservice have a better explanation/documentation about this webservice.
Does anybody know how to make WCF use these comments/descriptions, or how to write the code in C# that those comments are exported as part of the wsdl?
Thanks, Michael
WCF won't do it on it's own unfortunately. There are extensibility points for WSDL generation that you can use to accomplish this at least partially: Look up the IWSDLExportExtension interface.
I have a small example on how to implement a simple WSDL export extension up on my website which might help you get started.
If you're doing your design / coding in C# classes, adorned with [ServiceContract] and [OperationContract], then I don't know of any way to export documentation you might have on those classes and methods into the WSDL, unfortunately.
I was appalled by that too - I expected any /// comments on my classes and methods to show up in the WSDL - no luck :-(
Our solution now is this: 1) we create a basic "mockup" of our service interface with all operations in C# 2) we compile that into an assembly 3) we extract the metadata (WSDL, XSD) from that assembly and then throw away the C# "prototype" 4) we manually add comments (xs:annotation/xs:documentation) to the WSDL and XSD 5) from now on, the WSDL/XSD are the master - and we generate our interface from those descriptions
Cumbersome and annoying, but it works fairly ok for us.
I sure hope VS2010 / WCF 4.0 will bring us a bit more support in this area !!
Marc
It seems that the community project WCFExtras on CodePlex provides a work-around the limitations of .NET 3.5.