WCF REST service HTTP/HTTPS port sharing

Question

I'm trying to configure a WCF REST service to be accessible using HTTP as well as using HTTPS.

Since this is an in production service I would like to minimize the changes required to get HTTPS up and running. I would like to achieve a solution in which the admin only needs to replace the http:// with https://. According to this Wcf HTTP and HTTPS on the same host/port it should be possible to achieve this but I'm struggling with the configuration.

<services>
    <service name="My.Server">      
        <!-- HTTP services -->
        <endpoint address="/Common/"
                  behaviorConfiguration="restEndpointBehavior"
                  binding="webHttpBinding"
                  contract="My.IServer" />      
        <!-- HTTPS services -->
        <endpoint address="/Common/"
                  behaviorConfiguration="restEndpointBehavior"
                  binding="webHttpBinding"
                  bindingConfiguration="httpsBindingConfiguration"
                  contract="My.IServer" />
        <host>
            <baseAddresses>
                <add baseAddress="http://localhost:8732/MyService" />
                <add baseAddress="https://localhost:8732/MyService" />
            </baseAddresses>
        </host>
    </service>
</services>

Everything works fine as long as I'm just using either the HTTP or the HTTPS binding (tested using Postman) but as soon as I activate both endpoints the service startup fails stating:

Service cannot be started. System.ServiceModel.AddressAlreadyInUseException: HTTP could not register URL https://+:8732/MyService/Common/. Another application has already registered this URL with HTTP.SYS. ---> System.Net.HttpListenerException: Failed to listen on prefix 'https://+:8732/MyService/Common/' because it conflicts with an existing registration on the machine.

I'm aware of all the netsh http urlacl|sslcert stuff and can confirm that those should not be an issue since using only one endpoint (either HTTP or HTTPS) or changing the port for HTTPS e.g. :8733 fixes the issue and the service reponds as expected but as stated earlier I would like to use the same ports.

After researching and trying for quite some time now my guess is that such a configuration is not supported. Can anybody confirm my guess or does know a way to achieve the desired result?

Aria · Answer 1 · 2019-01-22T08:34:40.013

You know those endpoints should uses different bindingConfiguration as you have done it, I setup http and https for a service on port 80 and they are working nice but before anything I defined the configuration like below:

<webHttpBinding>
  <binding allowCookies="true" openTimeout="00:00:10" maxReceivedMessageSize="20000000">
    <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxArrayLength="200000000" maxStringContentLength="200000000" />
    <security mode="None" />
  </binding>
  <binding name="secureWebHttpBinding">
    <security mode="Transport">
      <transport clientCredentialType="None" />
    </security>
  </binding>
</webHttpBinding>

and then defining endpoints like:

<service behaviorConfiguration="Commom2.Behavior" name="name"> 
  <endpoint address="rest" behaviorConfiguration="Rest.Behavior" binding="webHttpBinding"  contract="x">
    <identity>
      <dns value="localhost" />
    </identity>
  </endpoint>
  <endpoint address="rest" behaviorConfiguration="Rest.Behavior" binding="webHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="secureHttpBinding" contract="x">
    <identity>
      <dns value="localhost" />
    </identity>
  </endpoint>
  <host>
    <baseAddresses>
      <add baseAddress="http://localhost/serviceName.svc" />
    </baseAddresses>
  </host>
</service>

Note:
I enabled https binding and uploaded valid certificate there and I have configur-ed one baseAddresses on http as you can see in config but that service is accessible on http://localhost/serviceName.svc/rest and https://localhost/serviceName.svc/rest

Your problem may because of having two baseAddresses and wrong port registered for https.

Thanks for your answer Aria. You are running your service through IIS right? Unfortunately I'm running the service in a Self-Hosted scenario (Windows service) so I do not have a webserver in front of WCF. — slator, Jan 22 '19 at 10:07
Did you check this https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3688342/windows-service-hosted-wcf-over-https — Aria, Jan 22 '19 at 10:10
Just checked your link but it does not really relay to my problem since I try to accomplish a port sharing (in my example :8732) whereas Rob tries to run a service using the HTTPS protocol. I've got HTTPS up and running but I need to use another port e.g :8733 — slator, Jan 22 '19 at 10:45

WCF REST service HTTP/HTTPS port sharing

1 Answers1