Steps to consume a WCF service in Visual Studio 2010

1. As described in above page, you will need to run svcutil.exeutility to generate the code files that will be later used in client consumer application. The svcutil.exe utility is installed with the Windows SDK’s and can be found at location – “c:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\vX.0A\bin”, where X can be any latest installed SDK number. In my case the location is as – 
“c:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\bin”

2. Now create a directory/folder to store the proxy files generated by svcutil utility. Here I am creating a folder named “WcfFiles” in c:\ drive.

3.  Open command prompt, goto c:\WcfFiles location and try following command as given in below image – 
Syntax : c:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\bin\Svcutil.exe your_webservice_url 

WCF Service - SvcUtil.exe

4.  The successful command execution will end with following 2 files in WcfFiles folder.

i.        Service1.cs

ii.        Output.config

                Now next step is to create a Client or consumer application. Create a new console application – 

New WCF client console app

                Here, I am creating a console application named as "MyFirstWcfWebServiceClientApp"

                Goto Add service reference 

WCF - Add reference

                Enter your WCF web service URL and click on Go button to see a list of available services. All your available web methods(services) will appear on the pane below. Give specific reference namespace. Here I am giving reference namespace as "MyFirstWcfWebServiceReference". 

WCF service - web method list

                Click on Ok button to finish the Add service reference wizard.

                Now add your existing Service1.cs file to the project. In step 3 , we have created this file using svcutil.exe utility which is located at "C:\WcfFiles" location.

                Add following code to the Program.cs file. 

WCF service - client consume code

                Now, open app.config file from Solution Explorer 

WCF service - App.Config

                Remove “MyFirstWcfWebServiceReference” and keep onlyIService1 in contract. 

WCF service - App.Config endpoints

                Save all files and hit F5 button to execute the client application. 

WCF service - Client/Consumer output

Your WCF web service consumer/client application is ready now. 

In this article we learn to consume a wcf service in console application. 

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