I had several conversations this weekend with Steve Swartz (one of my favorite people, not just because he's smart, but he's a really cool guy too!) about best practices in various aspects of the service model. I'll eventually get a chance to blurt all of my thoughts on this (and confirmations a-la Steve) but let's start with the subject: base address and endpoints...how “should” it work?

Consider this example that creates a new self-hosted service with a base address and endpoint Uri as shown here hard-coded:

Uri baseAddress = new Uri("http://localhost:8000/HelloIndigo");
using (ServiceHost host = new ServiceHost(typeof(HelloIndigo.Service), baseAddress))
{

host.AddEndpoint(typeof(HelloIndigo.IService), new BasicHttpBinding(), new Uri("http://localhost:8000/HelloIndigo/Service"));

host.Open();
Console.ReadLine();
host.Close();
}

Seems harmless, and it will work. Clients will bind against the target Uri of the endpoint:

http://localhost:8000/HelloIndigo/Service

But the truth of the matter is that the base address should be relied on as the...well as the base address for all endpoints that share the same protocol, port, etc. In the above example that would suggest that when I add an endpoint to the service host, I should only submit “Service“ as a string (something you can do with one of the overloaded methods for AddEndpoint):

host.AddEndpoint(typeof(HelloIndigo.IService), new BasicHttpBinding(), "Service");

The same goes for declarative configuration for the service host, no need to specify the complete Uri, it will be inferred from the base address:

<service type="HelloIndigo.Service" >
  <endpoint address="Service" contract="HelloIndigo.IService, HelloIndigo" binding="basicHttpBinding" />
</service>

This makes your services more configurable, modify the base address and relative Uri will follow suit.