Using an auto-generated Help page

Unlike SOAP-based WCF services, REST services use normal HTTP GET/POST requests for service communication. Therefore, a WSDL-based service metadata document is not that useful for describing a WCF REST service and the REST service clients will not use any pre-generated proxy class for consuming the REST service operations. In other words, for REST service client consumers, some service operation description information, like the operation endpoint address and message/parameter syntax, will be much more important than WSDL document or SOAP message format. Fortunately, in WCF 4.0 there is a Help page feature which can help a WCF REST service automatically provide a service description page to client consumers.

In this recipe, we will show you how the Help page feature can simplify the process of consuming a WCF REST service.

How to do it...

To demonstrate the WCF 4.0 Help page feature, we will use a typical REST service that contains two service operations with...