How to: Use Svcutil.exe to Download Metadata Documents

  • Article

You can use Svcutil.exe to download metadata from running services and to save the metadata to local files. For HTTP and HTTPS URL schemes, Svcutil.exe attempts to retrieve metadata using WS-MetadataExchange and XML Web Service Discovery. For all other URL schemes, Svcutil.exe uses only WS-MetadataExchange.

By default, Svcutil.exe uses the bindings defined in the MetadataExchangeBindings class. To configure the binding used for WS-MetadataExchange, you must define a client endpoint in the configuration file for Svcutil.exe (svcutil.exe.config) that uses the IMetadataExchange contract and that has the same name as the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme of the metadata endpoint address.

Aa751847.Caution(en-us,VS.85).gifCaution:
When running svcutil.exe to get metadata for a service that exposes two different service contracts that each contain an operation of the same name svcutil.exe displays an error saying "Cannot obtain Metadata from ...". For example, if you have a service that exposes a service contract called ICarService that has an operation Get(Car c) and the same service exposes a service contract called IBookService that has an operation Get(Book b). To work around this issue do one of the following:

  • Rename one of the operations

  • Set the Name to a different name

  • Set one of the operations' namespaces to a different namespace using the Namespace property

To download metadata using Svcutil.exe

  1. Locate the Svcutil.exe tool at the following location:

    C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v1.0.\bin

  2. At the command prompt, launch the tool using the following format.

    svcutil.exe /t:metadata  <url>* | <epr>

    You must specify the /t:metadata option to download metadata. Otherwise, client code and configuration are generated.

  3. The <url> argument specifies the URL to a service endpoint that provides metadata or to a metadata document hosted online. The <epr> argument specifies the path to an XML file that contains a WS-Addressing EndpointAddress for a service endpoint that supports WS-MetadataExchange.

For more options about using this tool for metadata download, see ServiceModel Metadata Utility Tool (Svcutil.exe).

Example

The following command downloads metadata documents from a running service.

svcutil /t:metadata http://service/metadataEndpoint

See Also

Other Resources

ServiceModel Metadata Utility Tool (Svcutil.exe)


© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Build Date: 2009-08-07