Getting started with WCF without wizards

Question

I'm just getting started with WCF, and while it's nice if you directly generate a new assembly with WCF service (where debug automatically picks up that it contains WCF services, and shows them to you), and it helps you to write boilerplate (by using the Add Service Reference ...) I have a hard time to convert a small application from a home-grown messaging system to WCF.

It's an already existing assembly, so if I add a WCF class, I cannot easily debug it (running debug just says the DLL cannot be started as it's a DLL), and I want to host the service from an own application. However, this breaks the "Add Service Stuff", as it cannot find my service (I control both sides, but I lack a function to generate a service reference directly from the service interface -- at least, I cannot find it.)

Is there a good tutorial for getting started with WCF without using wizards and other stuff, just to get some bare-bone RCP working? I understand that WCF can do much more, but I couldn't find a good tutorial for using WCF for really simple RCP (just binary send/receive, and manually configuring the ports...)

Answer 1

Check out these two screen casts - excellent stuff, both designed to "demystify" and make WCF more approachable and more intuitive:

• Keith Elder demystifies WCF
• Miguel Castro: Extreme WCF

Also, Aaron Skonnard had an excellent screencast series on how to build your first WCF service and covers lots of ground.

Here are a few blog posts and articles on how to do WCF without wizards:

• How To Create A WCF Client Proxy Without Having a Deployed WCF Service
• Sharing Types between WCF Service and Client
• WCF Primer Part 7 - creating clients
• Using WCF with automatic client proxies

Marc

Answer 2

If you want to learn more wcf check these 15 part series