After a long delay I’m finally ready to finish up my series on creating a smarter WCF service client. Please refer to the previous articles for where we’re at.

1. Identifying the issues with service references and the existing WCF client code
2. Creating a smarter WCF service client
3. Simplifying the calling of a WCF service
4. Creating the skeleton client template

We’re now ready to generate the T4 template to back the client template.

In the last article we presented a solution for calling WCF services that needed only a single line of code and no using statements. But it had many limitations including

• Reliance on a static class
• Testability was low for any code using it
• Reliance on the WCF client rather than the contract
• Not optimized for multiple calls

In reality the previous series of articles where all about setting up the infrastructure to support the final solution. All this infrastructure will be hidden from code when we are done. Let’s get started.

In the last article we replaced the standard WCF service client with an improved version. But beyond solving an issue with cleaning up the client we haven’t really improved the calling code any. In this article we are going to look at one approach for making the calling code cleaner. The less code that is needed to call something the cleaner it tends to make code. We will present one approach for making WCF calls one-liners. This is not always the best solution so we will talk about the disadvantages as well.

In the last article we made a case for why the standard WCF client generated by a service reference is not a great idea. Among the issues listed were testability and proper cleanup. To fix these issues we will need to ultimately replace service references altogether but this is time consuming for large code bases. When we started down this path at my company we did it using an iterative approach. While the intermediate stages may appear to be (and, in fact, may be) a step back we are ultimately working toward a solution that I believe is far better.

WCF is a great way to implement service-based APIs but the standard approach to consuming a service lacks a lot to be desired. In this series of articles I will discuss the approach that I’ve used in commercial applications to make consuming WCF services much cleaner and simpler. We will start with the standard approach and identify its flaws. From there we will work toward a solution that has minimal impact on consumers while providing maximal benefit. The solution itself is large but not overly complex. More importantly, once finished, you never need to worry about it again.