Silverlight app - service URL cannot handle IP address

Question

I have a Silverlight app that run on a single server which also hosts the web service used for data access. This is a Service Reference in the project. A common issue is that someone browses to the app using an IP address rather than the machine name. This breaks because the app thinks this is a cross-site violation.

To access the web service we create a System.ServiceModel.ClientBase and assign is an address in the web.config file. So locally in dev this is localhost:xxxx, and in production is it the machine name. Or we could set it to the IP address, but then everyone would have to go to the app using IP address only.

Is there a good way to do this? One issue is that some people access the app internally where the machine has a good name, while others access it through a VPN where they may need to use IP. I would like for both to work.

Answer 1

FYI I had this same issue. silverlight application and wcf service running on same server, but when application is started using an ip address vs. application url, then cross domain problems occur. evidently these urls/ips are not resolved/matched locally so to the silverlight application, they look like different domains. My app is running as an application and couldn't be moved to root of iis web site for technical reasons which is required for a clientaccesspolicy.xml file or crossdomain.xml to work properly.

I solved it by adding an entry into the hosts file on the server with the ip address and name of the domain. This looks a bit strange since we are on the server pointed to by the ip address and the domain/machine name but it works.

Adding this locally in the hosts file evidently redirects all requests for the ip address to the server PRIOR TO making either the call to get the silverlight application or the call the wcf service, so they look the same no matter whether the application or the service is called using an ip address.

Hope this helps anyone else in the future.

FYI - this does not work with VMs

We use VMs for some functionality and I have found this just doesn't work when running clients from the VM. The VM manager must do something to the request before passing it through. Just thought I'd mention this for future use.

Answer 2

Have you tried creating a clientaccesspolicy.xml file?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc197955(v=vs.95).aspx