No more IIS7 WCF REST 404 Error!
Originally posted on blogs.interknowlogy.com
Recently I’ve been trying to host a WCF REST .NET 4.0 service in IIS7. I downloaded the template for VS2010 used for creating REST services as explained here. Running the sample application found on that website worked fine from VS2010. I then switched to hosting the service in IIS7. The result however was a 404 error, not exactly what I was hoping for. My coworker Dan Hanan tried the same thing on his machine with complete success. We looked at the service configuration, IIS7 settings, among other obscure settings without success. Google wasn’t especially helpful since most of the results kept saying things like “add an *.svc file” (which is not required/used in .NET 4.0 REST services), others mentioned changing an IIS7 handler mapping so that the *.svc file would not be required, but none of these solutions helped. Tracing didn’t help me get any closer either.
Still the problem felt like a server issue, so I tried to narrow the search. I eventually came across this blog. There was a link to a question on the MSDN forums that mentions a handler mapping named “svc-Integrated-4.0″. When I looked at my handler mappings in IIS7 it did not contain that mapping. The last post on that question contained a link to the MSDN post One-Time Setup Procedure for the Windows Communication Foundation Samples explaining some steps that need to be taken in order to use the .NET 4.0 WCF services in IIS7. When I tried to run the aspnet_regiss and ServiceModelReg.exe commands explained in the post I only ran into more errors.
Frustrated I talked to my coworker Travis Schilling to see if he had any ideas and to see if his IIS7 contained the mapping. His IIS7 did contain the mapping and he was pretty sure it was installed by VS2010. After a little discussion we decided it would be best to do a repair install of VS2010. After the repair installation the mapping showed up in IIS7 and the REST service ran as expected. I’m not sure why the handler mapping wasn’t installed before, I can only assume it’s because I installed VS2010 before I installed IIS7.