Update service reference not working

Question

I'm using Visual Studio 2008 and have a WCF client working against a WCF service. They are both located in the same Visual Studio solution. After I've made a change in my WCF contract, I want to update the service reference on the client so that changes made to the contract is also made in the proxy.

My problem is that the proxy code is not re-generated.

When I select to update the service reference, the following happens:

1. A dialog with the title "Updating service reference 'name-of-reference'" is shown. This dialog has a progress bar.
2. The progressbar moves and the status text in the dialog is changed to "Updating configuration"
3. The progressbar moves a bit more, and the status text is chnaged to "Configuration update complete"

The dialog doesn't show the text "Generating \something\" (can't remember the exact wording) which I would expedct.

If I delete the service reference and add it again, the proxy is properly generated. I add the service using the exact same settings as before, so I don't think it's a issue I can solve by changing the service reference configuration on the client.

One thing I suspect may be the problem is that I've renamed the default wsHttpBindings in app.config. I've also renamed the default endpoints. The reason behind this is that I need more than one endpoint and having one named 'some-default-name' and one with my own name is just confusing.

The problem with deleting the service and adding it again is that Visual Studio adds a new binding in app.config (among other things) which should not be there.

Anyone seen this problem before? Anyone knows of a solution to it?

Answer 1

I know this solution is a bit late, but after trying the posted solutions with no success, this worked:

When you create a WebService, it generates a .dll file that you reference as your service reference. This .dll is (as most know) not recreated everytime you make changes to the .SVC file. You can see this if you go and view the date modified property of the web service .dll file, in my case it was three hours old!

My solution was to make appropriate changes to the service contact, save it, and re-build the project which will cause it to recreate all the .dll's reflecting the changes you made to the service contact file (.svc).

After this, update the service reference on the client app, and the changes are evident.

• Spades

Answer 2

My error was that I forgot to add the OperationContract attribute.

Answer 3

I had the same problem. Modified some of the data contracts. Tried to "Update Service Reference" and did not see the change. Dropped and re-added the service. Still didn't see the change when writing code in the client. Opened my client with Reflector and saw the service types had the change! So why was intellisense still showing old properties? Restarted Visual Studio and the modifications finally showed in intellisense.

Answer 4

My problem was that I had two methods with the same name. Everything builded fine, but I couldn't update service reference. When I tried to start just the WCF service, the error pops up.

Answer 5

Another solution to these kinds of problems is if your namespaces get jumbled in referenced projects that both consume the service. So:

ProjectA - Consumes ServiceA

ProjectB - Consumes ServiceA, Has Reference to ProjectA

If you change ServiceA and update ProjectB, sometimes the namespaces can can change to look at ProjectA's version of the service.

Answer 6

I've run into this problem with the following conditions:

1. Our workstations are connected to an Active Directory domain (nearly everything uses Windows Authentication)
2. The service reference I'm trying to update is hosted on localhost, and is running under IIS Express (so the Application Pool user is running as the developer's personal domain user account)
3. Another developer has added or updated the reference to the project more recently than me.

The only way I have figured out how to workaround this issue is to edit the configuration.svcinfo file for that service reference (you will need to show all files for the project to see it in visual studio), locate the following section:

userPrincipalName value="[e-mail]"

and change the user to my own domain user. After saving the file, I have no trouble updating the reference until another developer updates the service reference (likely using the same workaround). Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out a permanent solution to this issue.