WCF service as a part of MVC application

Question

I have a web application in MVC4. I'm going to host in on a shared hosting provider. I want to extend it with a WCF service for uploading files. (There will by a WPF desktop application that will allow users to upload files directly from their PCs.)

I'd rather host it somehow "together" to avoid problems with read/write access to storage directory, but I have no idea how to do this.

1. Should I host WCF as a selfhost in MVC app?

2. Should I make the WCF service an application or a class library?

3. How to tie it together with the MVC app?

Answer 1

I finally found how to make it work.

In your MVC app Web.config add:

<system.serviceModel>
    <serviceHostingEnvironment  aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true"/>
</system.serviceModel>

In your routes config ---> Global.asax or App_Start/RoutesConfig (depending on MVC version) add:

public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
    ...
    routes.Add(new ServiceRoute("hello", new ServiceHostFactory(), typeof(YourServiceClass)));
    ...
}

And that's it. Now your service appears under localhost/hello or wherever you deploy your app.

This uses BasicHttpBinging by default. If you need other you have to implement your own ServiceHostFactory. From what I observed, this method only works for HTTP bindings. When I tried to add a NetTcpBinding it failed.