Client Configuration in WCF 4.0

As Dr Nick announced in this post, WCF 4.0 will ship with a new feature to configure a client channel from a configuration source other than the traditional section in the application configuration file (I discussed a workaround for doing the same thing in WCF 3.0 a time ago in this post)

This will provide the flexibility to deploy some binaries with the client proxies together with an independent configuration file (which might be a resource file, a stand alone file included with your application or something you can download from an specific place), so the main configuration file does not need to be touched at all.

A new channel factory “ConfigurationChannelFactory” is included as part of the System.ServiceModel.Configuration namespace to create channels from an alternative configuration source.

var fileMap = new ExeConfigurationFileMap();
            fileMap.ExeConfigFilename = "otherFile.config";

var configuration = ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration(fileMap, ConfigurationUserLevel.None);

var factory = new ConfigurationChannelFactory<IService1>("BasicHttpBinding_IService1", configuration, new EndpointAddress("http://localhost:49187/Service1.svc"));

var client = factory.CreateChannel();

var s = client.GetData(3);

Console.WriteLine(s);

The file “otherFile.config” is just a simple configuration file that contains the client definition and configuration for using the “IService1” service.

<configuration>
 
    <system.serviceModel>
        <bindings>
            <basicHttpBinding>
              <binding name="BasicHttpBinding_IService1" >
                    <security mode="None">
                    </security>
                </binding>
            </basicHttpBinding>
        </bindings>
        <client>
            <endpoint address="http://localhost:49187/Service1.svc" binding="basicHttpBinding"
                bindingConfiguration="BasicHttpBinding_IService1" contract="ServiceReference1.IService1"
                name="BasicHttpBinding_IService1" />
        </client>
    </system.serviceModel>
</configuration>

All this code is based on the .NET 4.0 beta 1, so it might change in the final release.