Publishing Metadata Through Endpoints

WCF enables you to publish service metadata, using the HTTP-GET protocol. Clients can access the metadata using an HTTP-GET request with a ?wsdl query string appended. You do this by specifying a service behavior either programmatically or through a configuration file. The behavior is then referenced when specifying the service.

You also need to create a metadata exchange endpoint. This special endpoint can append mex to the HTTP address the service uses. The endpoint should use the IMetadataExchange interface as the contract and mexHttpBinding as the binding.

<system.serviceModel>
    <services>
      <service name="Service" behaviorConfiguration="ServiceBehavior">
        <endpoint address="http://localhost:50187/WCFService1/" binding="wsHttpBinding" contract="IService"></endpoint>
        <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange"></endpoint>
      </service>
    </services>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="ServiceBehavior">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
  </system.serviceModel>