Deploy WCF Web Service in IIS 7 - Getting Error

Question

I'm trying to add a service reference in VS 2010 to a WCF Web Service I have on a Server 2008/IIS7 server. I put the service into an existing/working ASP.NET site. When I type in the url of the service, it comes up with the standard service screen, but when I try to add the reference to a new website project I'm developing, I get the following error.

The document at the url https://www.nameofsite.net/service.svc?wsdl was not recognized as a known document type. The error message from each known type may help you fix the problem: - Report from 'XML Schema' is 'The document format is not recognized (the content type is 'text/html; charset=UTF-8').'. - Report from 'https://www.nameofsite.net/service.svc?wsdl' is 'The document format is not recognized (the content type is 'text/html; charset=UTF-8').'. - Report from 'DISCO Document' is 'Discovery document at the URL https://www.nameofsite.net/Service.svc?disco could not be found.'. - The document format is not recognized. - Report from 'WSDL Document' is 'The document format is not recognized (the content type is 'text/html; charset=UTF-8').'. Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved: 'https://www.nameofsite.net/service.svc?wsdl'. There was no endpoint listening at https://www.nameofsite.net/service.svc?wsdl that could accept the message. This is often caused by an incorrect address or SOAP action. See InnerException, if present, for more details. The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found. If the service is defined in the current solution, try building the solution and adding the service reference again.

I tried adding the mime type svc to IIS and that didn't work. I see that there's a lot of talk about soap 1.1 not communicating with soap 1.2 but I'm too new to this to even follow the instructions I've seen. Please help. Thanks.

Mike Parkhill Mike Parkhill · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-12T01:03:33

Is the service publishing its metadata? Check the httpsGetEnabled flag in the web.config file for the service:

<behaviors>
 <serviceBehaviors>
  <behavior name="NewBehavior">
    <serviceMetadata httpsGetEnabled="true" 
     httpsGetUrl="https://myComputerName/myEndpoint" />
  </behavior>
 </serviceBehaviors>
</behaviors>

For more info on these tags: ServiceMetaData

You may also need this endpoint configured in your web.config for the service:

<endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange" />

Some more background: Web.Config

WSDL vs MEX

Deploy WCF Web Service in IIS 7 - Getting Error

1 Answers