WCF Host and Client in Same Application

I recently found a need to host a WCF service within the same application as the client. The only real difference is the need to start the service in it’s own thread. When I originally tried hosting the service in the same thread as the client it deadlocked.

This is a simple enough matter to fix. The only gotcha, is the need to ensure the service has actually started up before making your first call from the client. I handled it with a simple flag.

   23 private ServiceHost _serviceHost;

   24 private MTGServer _server;       

   26 private bool _serverRunning;

...

   51 new Thread(new ParameterizedThreadStart(StartHost)).Start(hostConfiguration.Port);

   52 

   53 while (!_serverRunning)

   54 {

   55   Thread.Sleep(100);

   56 }

   57 

   58 JoinGame("localhost", hostConfiguration.Port);

...

   62 private void StartHost(object port)

   63 {           

   64  _server = new MTGServer();

   65 

   66  string address = String.Format("net.tcp://localhost:{0}", port);

   67 

   68  _serviceHost = new ServiceHost(_server, new Uri(address));

   69  _serviceHost.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(Shared.IMTGServer), new NetTcpBinding(), address);

   70 

   71  _serviceHost.Open();

   73  _serverRunning = true;

In my case, I’m using a service in Singleton Context Mode. I’m not sure if this issue would exist using one of the other context modes.