WCF: namespaces in WSDL

I’ve been working with WCF services a lot lately and I always specify namespaces for my service- and data-contracts. But I noticed that – by default – the WSDL of such a WCF service is generated in two parts:

• a part that resides in the namespace http://tempuri.org/,
• a part that resides in the namespace I specified for the service.

The first WSDL contains an import of the second one. This also results in two separate .WSDL files when you download the meta-data (I leave any generated XML Schemas containing the data-contracts out of it in this post).

Although this works fine, I wondered whether or not it is possible to combine these WSDL files in to one file that uses the namespace I specified for my service, and get rid of this ‘tempuri’ namespace. And guess what, this is easy!

Here’s an example of a service I will use to demonstrate how to do this:

[ServiceContract(Namespace="urn:wcfsamples:mywcfservice")] 
public interface IMyWcfService  
{  
   [OperationContract]  
   string GetData(int value);  
} 

// implementation of the service  
public class MyWcfServiceImpl : IMyWcfService  
{  
   public string GetData(int value)  
   {  
      return string.Format("You entered: {0}", value);  
   }  
}

This must look familiar. Now, to make sure the WSDL that is generated for the service (once you created a host) consists of only one part that resides in the specified namespace, you must take the following steps:

1. Add a ServiceBehavior attribute to the implementation-class, and specify the service’s namespace.
2. Add the bindingNamespace attribute to all (non meta-data exchange) endpoints you configured for the service.

Example of step 1:

[ServiceBehavior(Namespace="urn:wcfsamples:mywcfservice")]

Example of step 2:

<endpoint  
   address=""   
   binding="wsHttpBinding"  
   contract="MyWcfService.IMyWcfService"  
   bindingNamespace="urn:wcfsamples:mywcfservice"/>

That’s it. When you now download the meta-data for this service, you get only one .WSDL file. Exactly what I wanted.

I hope you find this information useful. And remember: let’s keep our WSDL tidy!