Difference between WCF Proxy and Channel Factory

There are two ways : Proxy and Channel Factory; to create a WCF Client or calling a WCF Service. In this article, I am going to expose the difference between Proxy and Channel Factory.

1. WCF Proxy

   A WCF proxy is a CLR class that exposes the service contract. A Service proxy class has the service contract operations and some additional operations for managing the proxy life cycle and the connection to the service.

   There are two ways to create a WCF proxy as given below:

   1. Using Visual Studio by adding service reference to the client application.

   2. Using SvcUtil.exe command-line utility.

2. Channel Factory

   A channel factory creates channels of different types that are used by client to send messages to the service. ChannelFactory class is used with a known interface to create the channel. This approach is commonly used when you have access control to both the server and the client.

   WSHttpBinding binding = new WSHttpBinding();
   EndpointAddress endpoint = new EndpointAddress("http://localhost/WcfService/MyService.svc/ws");
   ChannelFactory<IMyService>channelFactory = new ChannelFactory<IMyService>(binding,endpoint );
   IMyService channel = channelFactory.CreateChannel();
   //calling service operation
   channel.DoWork();
   //Close channel
   channelFactory.Close();
   

Difference between WCF Proxy and Channel Factory

What do you think?

I hope you will enjoy the tips while programming with WCF. I would like to have feedback from my blog readers. Your valuable feedback, question, or comments about this article are always welcome.

Further Reading