ABCs of an EndPoint in WCF

WCF Service is a program that exposes a collection of Endpoints. Each Endpoint is a portal for communicating with the world. All the WCF communications are take place through end point. End point consists of three components.

Address

Basically URL, specifies where this WCF service is hosted .Client will use this url to connect to the service.

HTTP	It's a protocol for communication over the web (uses TCP at a lower level).
TCP	High performance communication in WCF. Good for intranet scenarios.
Named Pipe	Fast and reliable communication between client and server running on the same machine.
MSMQ	Used when the client enqueues a message that a service can then consume later.

e.g :  

http://localhost:8090/MyService/SimpleCalculator.svc
net.tcp://localhost:8001/Service
net.pipe://localhost/Service
net.msmq://localhost

Binding

Binding will describes how client will communicate with service. There are different protocols available for the WCF to communicate to the Client. You can mention the protocol type based on your requirements.
A binding has several characteristics, including the following:

• Transport -Defines the base protocol to be used like HTTP, Named Pipes, TCP, and MSMQ are some type of protocols.
• Encoding (Optional) - Three types of encoding are available-Text, Binary, or Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM). MTOM is an interoperable message format that allows the effective transmission of attachments or large messages (greater than 64K).
• Protocol(Optional) - Defines information to be used in the binding such as Security, transaction or reliable messaging capability

The following table gives some list of protocols supported by WCF binding.

Binding	Description
BasicHttpBinding	Basic Web service communication. No security by default
WSHttpBinding	Web services with WS-* support. Supports transactions
WSDualHttpBinding	Web services with duplex contract and transaction support
WSFederationHttpBinding	Web services with federated security. Supports transactions
MsmqIntegrationBinding	Communication directly with MSMQ applications. Supports transactions
NetMsmqBinding	Communication between WCF applications by using queuing. Supports transactions
NetNamedPipeBinding	Communication between WCF applications on same computer. Supports duplex contracts and transactions
NetPeerTcpBinding	Communication between computers across peer-to-peer services. Supports duplex contracts
NetTcpBinding	Communication between WCF applications across computers. Supports duplex contracts and transactions

 

Contract

Collection of operation that specifies what the endpoint will communicate with outside world. Usually name of the Interface will be mentioned in the Contract, so the client application will be aware of the operations which are exposed to the client. Each operation is a simple exchange pattern such as one-way, duplex and request/reply.



Below figure illustrate the functions of Endpoint

 

 
Endpoints will be mentioned in the web.config file on the created service.
Example :

<system.serviceModel>
    <services>
      <service name="MathService"  behaviorConfiguration="MathServiceBehavior">
        <endpoint address="http://localhost:8090/MyService/MathService.svc" contract="IMathService" binding="wsHttpBinding"/> 
      </service>
    </services>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="MathServiceBehavior">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="True"/>
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" />
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
</system.serviceModel>