Why do custom verbs in my WCF REST Service return 404?

Question

I decorated my ServiceContract with the WebInvoke attributes required to publish it as a RESTful service:

    [OperationContract]
    [WebInvoke(Method = "Authenticate", UriTemplate = "User")]
    AuthenticateUserOutput AuthenticateUser(AuthenticateUserInput input);

I then host it with a ServiceRoute :

RouteTable.Routes.Add(new ServiceRoute("", new ServiceHostFactory(), typeof(MyWcfService)));

The WCF REST help page lists User as a URI and Authenticate as a verb

However, if I point our REST test client at it, it returns a 404.

Why can't I use custom verbs?

Answer 1

The solution is to change your <system.webServer> section at either the IIS level or, my preference, at the web.config level.

I believe this required IIS7.0+ and .net 4.0+ and an Integrated app pool.

Simply add the following element (or to an existing one) under <configuration>

<system.webServer>
    <handlers>
        <remove name="ExtensionlessUrl-Integrated-4.0"/>
        <add name="ExtensionlessUrl-Integrated-4.0" path="*." verb="*" type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler" preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv4.0" responseBufferLimit="0" />
    </handlers>
    <security>
        <requestFiltering>
            <verbs allowUnlisted="true"/>
        </requestFiltering>
    </security>
</system.webServer>

The important changes to note are:

verb="*" This informs that handler to match any verb

This switches the request filtering to it's most permissive state, by default all verbs are permitted.

Documentation on how to configure this in other versions of IIS:

http://www.iis.net/configreference/system.webserver/handlers http://www.iis.net/configreference/system.webserver/security/requestfiltering/verbs

Answer 2

First thing is,

[WebInvoke(Method = "Authenticate")]

doesn't make any sense to me.

Try,

[WebInvoke(Method = "GET"), UriTemplate = "User")]

then make changes in web.config for restful service.

  <endpointBehaviors>
    <behavior name="EndPointBehaviour">
      <webHttp />
    </behavior>
  </endpointBehaviors>

  <serviceBehaviors>
    <behavior name="">
      <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" />
      <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false" />          
    </behavior>
  </serviceBehaviors>

Finally, under service tag add,

<endpoint binding="webHttpBinding"   behaviorConfiguration="EndPointBehaviour" name="ServiceEndPoint" contract="WcfService.IService1" />