Question

I have a WCF RESTful web service (using the webHttpBinding) running under IIS, exposed via an SVC file (accessed at http://projectserver/BlarghService/BlarghService.svc).

I can access service endpoints through the URI templates defined on each service by using the BlarghService.svc file, like so:

http://projectserver/BlarghService/BlarghService.svc/accounts/
http://projectserver/BlarghService/BlarghService.svc/accounts/342432

Both of these work fine.

However it’s important I remove implementation details from the URIs, so I used IIS URI rewriting module and set up a wildcard rewriting rule which tacks everything after /BlarghService/ to the end of BlarghService.svc, so the following are transformed into the earlier representations:

http://projectserver/BlarghService/accounts/
http://projectserver/BlarghService/accounts/342432

However, when I request these resources I get 404 errors. These are not IIS-generated 404 errors, but those generated by ASP.NET itself (so IIS is correctly rewriting the URL). However ASP.NET decides to check if the specified file (“BlarghService.svc/accounts/342432”) exists in the filesystem which it should be passing it on to my web service.

But the strange thing is when I copy the reported “Requested URL” (from the ASP.NET 404 error) back into the address bar, it works fine.

So what’s going on?

EDIT: Here is my web.config (located in the “BlarghService” directory)

<system.web>
    <compilation debug="true" />
    <authentication mode="None" />
    <customErrors mode="Off" />
</system.web>

<system.webServer>
    <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" />
    <!-- Currently ASP.NET steps in says it's a 404 error when it should be handled by BlarghService.svc, I've no idea why. -->
    <rewrite>
        <rules>
            <rule name="BlarghServiceRewriteRule" patternSyntax="Wildcard">
                <match url="*" />
                <action type="Rewrite" url="BlarghService.svc/{R:0}" />
            </rule>
        </rules>
    </rewrite>
</system.webServer>

<system.serviceModel>
    <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true">
        <baseAddressPrefixFilters>
            <add prefix="http://projectserver/BlarghService" />
        </baseAddressPrefixFilters>
    </serviceHostingEnvironment>
    <services>
        <service name="Foo.Blargh.Api.BlarghService" behaviorConfiguration="BlarghServiceBehavior">

            <endpoint name="BlarghEndpoint" address="BlarghService.svc" behaviorConfiguration="BlarghEndpointBehavior" binding="webHttpBinding" contract="RH.Blargh.Api.BlarghService" />

        </service>
    </services>
    <behaviors>
        <serviceBehaviors>
            <behavior name="BlarghServiceBehavior">
                <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="false" />
                <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" />
            </behavior>
        </serviceBehaviors>
        <endpointBehaviors>
            <behavior name="BlarghEndpointBehavior">
                <webHttp />
            </behavior>
        </endpointBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
</system.serviceModel>

Answer 1

UPDATE: It turns out that WCF can only respond on one particular HTTP host header at a time, and that my URL rewriting was involved in responding to some host headers but not others. By standardising on a single set of host-headers and reformulating my rewrite rules accordingly it started working.