How to remove the ".svc" extension in RESTful WCF service?

Question

In my knowledge, the RESTful WCF still has ".svc" in its URL.

For example, if the service interface is like

[OperationContract]
[WebGet(UriTemplate = "/Value/{value}")]
string GetDataStr(string value);

The access URI is like "http://machinename/Service.svc/Value/2". In my understanding, part of REST advantage is that it can hide the implementation details. A RESTful URI like "http://machinename/Service/value/2" can be implemented by any RESTful framework, but a "http://machinename/Service.svc/value/2" exposes its implementation is WCF.

How can I remove this ".svc" host in the access URI?

See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3662555/how-can-i-override-a-svc-file-in-my-routing-table — Tuomas Hietanen, Sep 22 '10 at 10:54

score 47 · Answer 1 · answered May 31 '12 at 23:26

47

I know this post is a bit old now, but if you happen to be using .NET 4, you should look at using URL Routing (introduced in MVC, but brought into core ASP.NET).

In your app start (global.asax), just have the following route configuration line to setup the default route:

RouteTable.Routes.Add(new ServiceRoute("mysvc", new WebServiceHostFactory(), typeof(MyServiceClass)));

then your URLs would look like this:

http://servername/mysvc/value/2

HTH

answered May 31 '12 at 23:26

Thiago Silva

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3

A much cleaner solution. Thanks! – smdrager Apr 15 '13 at 13:36
2

The best solution (if using 4.0) – schmoopy Jun 04 '13 at 21:37
This fails in asp.net mvc 4, since all the other links generated by mvc will now point to the service. – Sriwantha Attanayake Aug 24 '13 at 15:42
you have to configure your route table accordingly so that your routes don't collide. You can use a route debugging tool like Route Debugger (codeplex), or Glimpse. – Thiago Silva Aug 26 '13 at 22:59
So when you use this you can remove the SVC (markup) file, correct? – Mark Good Dec 15 '13 at 12:25
i believe so, but do the due dilligence, test and report your findings here for good measure. – Thiago Silva Dec 17 '13 at 05:28
5

Don't forget to add a reference to `System.ServiceModel.Activation` to your project if it doesn't exist. (Default WCF project in VS2012 doesn't seem to include this) – crush Mar 18 '15 at 13:34
1

and don't forget to add this to the Global.asax.cs: `using System.Web.Routing; using System.ServiceModel.Activation;` – cdonner Feb 24 '16 at 22:05
Also, I've just found that if you specify your service name as an empty string, the request can be made without any service name - e.g. https://localhost:1234/MyMethodName?param=value – QA Collective Jan 30 '18 at 06:27

score 31 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 10 '08 at 09:03

In IIS 7 you can use the Url Rewrite Module as explained in this blog post.

In IIS 6 you could write an http module that will rewrite the url:

public class RestModule : IHttpModule
{
    public void Dispose() { }

    public void Init(HttpApplication app)
    {
        app.BeginRequest += delegate
        {
            HttpContext ctx = HttpContext.Current;
            string path = ctx.Request.AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath;

            int i = path.IndexOf('/', 2);
            if (i > 0)
            {
                string svc = path.Substring(0, i) + ".svc";
                string rest = path.Substring(i, path.Length - i);
                ctx.RewritePath(svc, rest, ctx.Request.QueryString.ToString(), false);
            }
        };
    }
}

And there's a nice example how to achieve extensionless urls in IIS 6 without using third party ISAPI modules or wildcard mapping.

int i = path.IndexOf('/', 2); must be int i = path.LastIndexOf('/', 2); — Robin, Jul 16 '12 at 14:11

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 20 '08 at 03:20

4

Here's more detailed info using the IIS 7 Rewrite Module, or using a custom module: http://www.west-wind.com/Weblog/posts/570695.aspx

answered Dec 20 '08 at 03:20

Rick Strahl

17,302
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score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 15 '10 at 03:44

3

There is also a way to eliminate the physical .svc files altogether. This can be done with a VirtualPathProvider.

See: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wcf/thread/350f2cb6-febd-4978-ae65-f79735d412db

answered Jan 15 '10 at 03:44

Jason Kresowaty

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Cheeso · Answer 5 · 2010-04-22T01:47:47.017

2

In IIS6 or 7, you can use IIRF, a free rewriting filter. Here's the rule I used:

# Iirf.ini
#

RewriteEngine ON
RewriteLog  c:\inetpub\iirfLogs\iirf-v2.0.services
RewriteLogLevel 3
StatusInquiry  ON  RemoteOk
CondSubstringBackrefFlag *
MaxMatchCount 10

# remove the .svc tag from external URLs
RewriteRule  ^/services/([^/]+)(?<!\.svc)/(.*)$    /services/$1.svc/$2  [L]

edited Apr 22 '10 at 01:47

answered Jan 15 '10 at 03:35

Cheeso

189,189
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score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 15 '08 at 22:24

2

Its easy on IIS 7 - use a URL Rewrite Module

On IIS 6 I found its easiest to use the ISAPI Rewrite module which lets you define a set of regular expressions that map the request Urls to the .svc file...

answered Dec 15 '08 at 22:24

Eran Kampf

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score 1 · Answer 7 · answered May 16 '15 at 11:47

Add this to your global.asax

private void Application_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    Context.RewritePath(System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(
               Request.Path, "/rest/(.*)/", "/$1.svc/"));
}

This will replace /rest/Service1/arg1/arg2 by /Service1.svc/arg1/arg2

How to remove the ".svc" extension in RESTful WCF service?

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