Get HttpHandler for asp.net web service

Question

I'm using asp.net RouteTable to register a custom route for a WebService, however asp.net WebServices do not inherit from IHttpHandler interface making it it neither simple nor clean to pass the call on to the underlying HttpHandler .

Right now, the only official/documented way is to use WebServiceHandlerFactory to get the right handler for the service:

IHttpHandler handler = new WebServiceHandlerFactory().GetHandler(HttpContext.Current, "*", "url", "path");

However, this requires virtual path of the service which is not what I'm looking for! The other workaround I found was actually hacking into WebServiceHandlerFactory using reflection and call the internal CoreGetHandler method:

var wshf = new WebServiceHandlerFactory();
var coreGetHandler = wshf.GetType().GetMethod("CoreGetHandler", BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);
var httpHandler = (IHttpHandler)coreGetHandler.Invoke(wshf, new object[] { typeof(MyWebService), context, context.Request, context.Response });

But it is not an official/documented way to do so and might change in future releases, so my question is that if there's any way to get the right HttpHandler for an asp.net WebService solely based on its type rather than its virtual path?

Answer 1

There's an alternative to the legacy asmx WebServices, using WCF web services is much more easier and extensible. I finally found the solution how to integrate the WCF service with the IIS routing pipeline from here

Here's a quick snippet:

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