WCF Client and Service Endpoints Using the Same Binding

Question

I feel like this has probably been answered and maybe I am not searching with the right terms.

I have a WCF service that acting like a proxy. It is a middle man for two services that normally can talk to each other, but now go through this new service.

Old: A -> B

New: A -> MM -> B

I need to expose the same contract as a service endpoint (for "A" to talk to "MM") and as a client endpoint (for "MM" to talk to "B").

Can these two share a binding configuration and just give the endpoints different names? Or is there a better way to handle this scenario?

(inside of <system.serviceModel> tag)

<client>
    <endpoint address="http://<remoteaddress>/" binding="basicHttpBinding" 
    bindingConfiguration="MyBinding" contract="IService" name="ToB" />
</client>
<services>
    <service behaviorConfiguration="Behavior" name="Service">
        <endpoint address="" binding="basicHttpBinding"
        bindingConfiguration="MyBinding" name="FromA" contract="IService" />
        <host>
            <baseAddresses>
                <add baseAddress="http://localhost:8080/MyService" />
            </baseAddresses>
        </host>
    </service>
</services>
<bindings>
    <basicHttpBinding>
        <binding name="MyBinding" closeTimeout="00:15:00" openTimeout="00:15:00"
        receiveTimeout="00:15:00" sendTimeout="00:15:00" allowCookies="false" 
        bypassProxyOnLocal="false" hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard" 
        maxBufferSize="2048000000" maxBufferPoolSize="2048000000" 
        maxReceivedMessageSize="2048000000" messageEncoding="Text" 
        textEncoding="utf-8" transferMode="Buffered" useDefaultWebProxy="true">
            <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxStringContentLength="8192" 
            maxArrayLength="4065536" maxBytesPerRead="4096" 
            maxNameTableCharCount="16384" />
            <security mode="None">
                <transport clientCredentialType="None" 
                proxyCredentialType="None" realm="" />
                <message clientCredentialType="UserName" 
                algorithmSuite="Default" />
            </security>
        </binding>
    </basicHttpBinding>
</bindings>

Edit:

The error message with this setup is:

com.vsp.cal.webservice.external.SystemFault

Stack: Server stack trace:

   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel.HandleReply(ProxyOperationRuntime operation, ProxyRpc& rpc)

   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel.Call(String action, Boolean oneway, ProxyOperationRuntime operation, Object[] ins, Object[] outs, TimeSpan timeout)

   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannelProxy.InvokeService(IMethodCallMessage methodCall, ProxyOperationRuntime operation)

   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannelProxy.Invoke(IMessage message)

Answer 1

A change in name is not enough to uniquely define an endpoint. Instead goes back to the old "ABC" - address, binding, contract. At least one of those must be different to uniquely define a new endpoint. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733107(v=vs.100).aspx

Does this help?

Answer 2

Thank you to everyone who looked this over and tried to help!

In the end it was not the configuration, but a stupid coding error. The cryptic error message is the response from the other side (a Java web service). It wasn't happy because I was sending a null object due to a failed cast.

So the answer is that this configuration DOES WORK when you don't code like an idiot.