Enabling SSL for a WCF Service

Introduction

Last week a reader mailed me with some questions about my “WCF over HTTPS” blog post, which I wrote almost 3 years ago.

I created some sample code to help him enable SSL for a WCF service. Last year this was my most popular article, so I thought it would make sense to create a new up-to-date version that shows you step-by-step how to enable SSL for a WCF service with as little fuss as possible.

Let’s get started…

IIS Express: HTTP and HTTPS

Introduction

Continuing on the previous article, this post discusses the creation of a simple web application hosted by IIS Express using a feature which Cassini doesn’t support, namely HTTPS.

The built-in Cassini web server (ASP.NET Development Server) only supports HTTP. So if you want to, for instance, use HTTPS when developing a WCF service you are stuck and you’ll have to resort to hosting it in IIS.

Using IIS Express life gets simpler…

IIS Express

Introduction

Tired of developing ASP.NET web sites with the ASP.NET Development Server (Cassini) or the IIS version that was installed along with your Windows operating system?

Cassini works great in most cases, but sometimes you want to test some functionality (SSL,…) that it cannot handle and you have to go through the hassle of hosting your site in IIS.

Let’s quickly setup IIS Express…