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Tutorial: Define a Windows Communication Foundation service contract

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This tutorial describes the first of five tasks required to create a basic Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) application. For an overview of the tutorials, see Tutorial: Get started with Windows Communication Foundation applications.

When you create a WCF service, your first task is to define a service contract. The service contract specifies what operations the service supports. An operation can be thought of as a Web service method. You create service contracts by defining a C# or Visual Basic interface. An interface has the following characteristics:

In this tutorial, you learn how to:

  • Create a WCF Service Library project.
  • Define a service contract interface.

Create a WCF Service Library project and define a service contract interface

  1. Open Visual Studio as an administrator. To do so, select the Visual Studio program in the Start menu, and then select More > Run as administrator from the shortcut menu.

  2. Create a WCF Service Library project.

    1. From the File menu, select New > Project.

    2. In the New Project dialog, on the left-hand side, expand Visual C# or Visual Basic, and then select the WCF category. Visual Studio displays a list of project templates in the center section of the window. Select WCF Service Library.

      Note

      If you don't see the WCF project template category, you may need to install the Windows Communication Foundation component of Visual Studio. In the New Project dialog box, select the Open Visual Studio Installer link on the left side. Select the Individual components tab, and then find and select Windows Communication Foundation under the Development activities category. Choose Modify to begin installing the component.

    3. In the bottom section of the window, enter GettingStartedLib for the Name and GettingStarted for the Solution name.

    4. Select OK.

      Visual Studio creates the project, which has three files: IService1.cs (or IService1.vb for a Visual Basic project), Service1.cs (or Service1.vb for a Visual Basic project), and App.config. Visual Studio defines these files as follows:

      • The IService1 file contains the default definition of the service contract.
      • The Service1 file contains the default implementation of the service contract.
      • The App.config file contains the configuration info needed to load the default service with the Visual Studio WCF Service Host tool. For more information about the WCF Service Host tool, see WCF Service Host (WcfSvcHost.exe).

      Note

      If you installed Visual Studio with Visual Basic developer environment settings, the solution might be hidden. If this is the case, select Options from the Tools menu, then select Projects and Solutions > General in the Options window. Select Always show solution. Also, verify that Save new projects when created is selected.

  3. From Solution Explorer, open the IService1.cs or IService1.vb file, and replace its code with the following code:

    using System;
using System.ServiceModel;

namespace GettingStartedLib
{
        [ServiceContract(Namespace = "http://Microsoft.ServiceModel.Samples")]
        public interface ICalculator
        {
            [OperationContract]
            double Add(double n1, double n2);
            [OperationContract]
            double Subtract(double n1, double n2);
            [OperationContract]
            double Multiply(double n1, double n2);
            [OperationContract]
            double Divide(double n1, double n2);
        }
}

    Imports System.ServiceModel

Namespace GettingStartedLib

    <ServiceContract(Namespace:="http://Microsoft.ServiceModel.Samples")> _
    Public Interface ICalculator

        <OperationContract()> _
        Function Add(ByVal n1 As Double, ByVal n2 As Double) As Double
        <OperationContract()> _
        Function Subtract(ByVal n1 As Double, ByVal n2 As Double) As Double
        <OperationContract()> _
        Function Multiply(ByVal n1 As Double, ByVal n2 As Double) As Double
        <OperationContract()> _
        Function Divide(ByVal n1 As Double, ByVal n2 As Double) As Double
    End Interface
End Namespace

    This contract defines an online calculator. Notice the ICalculator interface is marked with the ServiceContractAttribute attribute (simplified as ServiceContract). This attribute defines a namespace to disambiguate the contract name. The code marks each calculator operation with the OperationContractAttribute attribute (simplified as OperationContract).

Next steps

In this tutorial, you learned how to:

  • Create a WCF Service Library project.
  • Define a service contract interface.

Advance to the next tutorial to learn how to implement the WCF service contract.

Tutorial: Implement a WCF service contract