Inside the Standard Bindings: BasicHttp
Index for bindings in this series:
Since there isn't a lot of documentation about how the standard bindings are put together, I decided to start a series going over each of the bindings and looking at their component pieces. I'm not going to dive into all of the binding elements so that the presentation goes a little bit faster. I'll probably get back to that some time this summer and do another series that focuses on individual binding elements.
The BasicHttp binding is going to be one of the more popular out-of-the-box choices for communicating over the Internet. The primary pivot for what goes in your channel stack is going to be the method you choose for securing messages. The choices you have with BasicHttp are no security, HTTPS security, SOAP security, and HTTPS security with SOAP credentials. This is set by the Security.Mode property on the binding. Let's look at each of those in turn.
I've cut down on the number of properties presented by eliminating duplicates between the binding settings and binding element settings. For instance, the XML reader quotas can be set on either the binding or the message encoder binding element, but I'm only going to show them on the message encoder. I've also omitted most of the security credential settings because they're very messy and you hopefully won't need to change them much.
When security is None, there are two elements in the channel stack.
System.ServiceModel.Channels.TextMessageEncodingBindingElement
AddressingVersion: Addressing10 (https://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing) MaxReadPoolSize: 64 MaxWritePoolSize: 16 ReaderQuotas: MaxArrayLength: 16384 MaxBytesPerRead: 4096 MaxDepth: 32 MaxNameTableCharCount: 16384 MaxStringContentLength: 8192System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpTransportBindingElement
AllowCookies: False AuthenticationScheme: Anonymous BypassProxyOnLocal: False HostNameComparisonMode: StrongWildcard ManualAddressing: False MappingMode: Soap MaxBufferPoolSize: 524288 MaxBufferSize: 65536 MaxReceivedMessageSize: 65536 ProxyAddress: ProxyAuthenticationScheme: Anonymous Realm: Scheme: http TransferMode: Buffered UnsafeConnectionNtlmAuthentication: False UseDefaultWebProxy: True
And there are a number of loose settings on the binding not otherwise covered by these elements.
CloseTimeout: 00:01:00
EnvelopeVersion: Soap11 (https://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/)
Namespace: https://tempuri.org/
OpenTimeout: 00:01:00
ReceiveTimeout: 00:01:00
SendTimeout: 00:01:00
TextEncoding: System.Text.UTF8Encoding
These are the baseline settings and all of the variations are very similar so I'm not going to repeat the properties unless they're new or different.
By switching over to Transport security, you just replace the HTTP transport with an HTTPS transport.
System.ServiceModel.Channels.TextMessageEncodingBindingElement
System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpsTransportBindingElement
RequireClientCertificate: False Scheme: https
With Message security, you're going to have a layered channel providing security at the SOAP level but then an unsecure HTTP transport at the bottom of your channel stack. SOAP security does not protect HTTP-level information, such as headers, so those should not be considered trustworthy.
- System.ServiceModel.Channels.AsymmetricSecurityBindingElement
- System.ServiceModel.Channels.TextMessageEncodingBindingElement
- System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpTransportBindingElement
The last security mode, which is TransportWithMessageCredentials security, is also called mixed-mode security. Mixed-mode security does most of the heavy lifting through transport security. You then get the minimal SOAP security on top to provide credentials at the message level.
System.ServiceModel.Channels.TransportSecurityBindingElement
System.ServiceModel.Channels.TextMessageEncodingBindingElement
System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpsTransportBindingElement
RequireClientCertificate: False Scheme: https
Finally, you can also change the message encoder by setting the MessageEncoding property on the binding. The only other choice you have besides the default of text is MTOM. That just changes the message encoder binding element in your stack.
- System.ServiceModel.Channels.MtomMessageEncodingBindingElement
- System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpTransportBindingElement
You'd have to build your own binding if you wanted to use any of the other message encoders.
Next time: TechEd 2006 Chalk Talk Schedule
Comments
Anonymous
June 01, 2006
The versioning of a message in WCF is a combination of the versioning of the envelope format and the...Anonymous
June 06, 2006
Today continues the series I started last week about the standard bindings. The previous article covered...Anonymous
June 07, 2006
Part 3 of the series detailing the standard bindings (Part 1 was on BasicHttp and Part 2 was on NetTcp)....Anonymous
June 08, 2006
Only one more to go and I'll hit the magic 100 - only took three years to get there-). [More]Anonymous
June 20, 2006
The comment has been removedAnonymous
June 27, 2006
The final HTTP binding that I'm covering in this series is WSFederationHttp. Federation is the ability...Anonymous
July 29, 2006
I thought I'd share the binding inspector program I wrote a few months ago to explore the different settings...Anonymous
October 17, 2006
The versioning of a message in WCF is a combination of the versioning of the envelope format and theAnonymous
January 04, 2007
BasicHttpBinding, can there be security?. Yes! The point is this binding can be secured and that tooAnonymous
September 24, 2007
Only one more to go and I'll hit the magic 100 - only took three years to get there-). The MasterAnonymous
December 05, 2008
Only one more to go and I'll hit the magic 100 - only took three years to get there-). The Master, Mike Gunderloy (who everyone should read and I ripped off) has hit Number 900 (Congrats Mike!) and has announced a new contest Windows Vista Beta 2 has