Simple REST WCF Service.

Hi Everyone,
    Last week I was working on a requirement to build a Restful WCF service. The service will be consumed by any user over web. For communication the service will accept the XML data and return XML data as output.

    Here are the below steps I have performed to achieve the requirement. First we will build Restful WCF service and then we will pass the XML data to the WCF Service

Step 1: Create a WCF Service application in Visual Studio. Give a suitable name(for example WCFRESTAPI). The Service will have a interface called Contract and a class called Service. The interface will contain the declaration of methods, which will be exposed by the service. The Service class will implement the methods of the Contract.

Step 2: Decorate the method of Contract Class with the following attribute:

1. [WebInvoke(BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.Bare, Method = "POST",
UriTemplate = "InvokeRestApi", RequestFormat = WebMessageFormat.Xml, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Xml)]
Student InvokeRestApi(Student data); [This is the method declaration, Student is a class defined by the programmer.]
2. [OperationContract]

Step 3:  Implement the method in your service class.

Step 4: Modify your Web Config File as below:
Add a endpoint with webHttpBinding binding and define the behavior of it. The XML is given below.

<system.serviceModel> 
    <services>
      <service name="WCFRESTAPI.Service1">
        <endpoint behaviorConfiguration="web" address="" binding="webHttpBinding" contract="WCFRESTAPI.IService1"></endpoint>
        <host>
          <baseAddresses>
            <add baseAddress="http://localhost:60140/Service1"/>         
          </baseAddresses>
        </host>
      </service>
    </services>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior>
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" httpsGetEnabled="true"/>
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true"/>
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
      <endpointBehaviors>
        <behavior name="web">       
          <webHttp/>
        </behavior>
      </endpointBehaviors>
    </behaviors> 
  </system.serviceModel>

[Service1: Name of service class, IService1: Name of the contract interface]

Now run the service and test it using Postman application.

Below the code snippet is given.

Contract Interface: 

[ServiceContract]
    public interface IService1
    {
        [WebInvoke(BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.Bare, Method = "POST", UriTemplate = "InvokeRestApi", 
            RequestFormat = WebMessageFormat.Xml, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Xml)]
        [OperationContract]
        Student InvokeRestApi(Student data);
    }

Service Class:

public class Service1 : IService1
    {
        public Student InvokeRestApi(Student data)
        {
            data.Description = "Data has been successfully saved. ";
            return data;
        }
    }

WebConfig File Changes:

<system.serviceModel>    
    <services>
      <service name="WCFRESTAPI.Service1">
        <endpoint behaviorConfiguration="web" address="" binding="webHttpBinding" contract="WCFRESTAPI.IService1">
</endpoint>
        <host>
          <baseAddresses>
            <add baseAddress="http://localhost:60140/Service1"/>            
          </baseAddresses>
        </host>
      </service>
    </services>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior>
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" httpsGetEnabled="true"/>
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true"/>
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
      <endpointBehaviors>
        <behavior name="web">          
          <webHttp/>
        </behavior>
      </endpointBehaviors>
    </behaviors>    
  </system.serviceModel>
  <system.webServer>
    <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"/>
    <directoryBrowse enabled="true"/>
  </system.webServer>

Postman Request:

Postman Response: