How to fix 'thumbprint' attribute is invalid error in Azure Cloud Service

Hi,

While i was configuring a web role in a cloud service project to use SSL certificate, I was adding my certificate to the Service Configuration file (cscfg) as follows:

  <Certificate name ="MyCertTest" thumbprint="cd947ee0b988e3b144d9fc39af47128dec68b731" thumbprintAlgorithm="sha1"/>
 

After i copied the thumbprint value from my certificate and paste it in the configuration file (cscfg) i found that there is an underlying error under thumbprint attribute and when i build i get the following error:

the xml specification is not valid: the 'thumbprint' attribute is invalid the pattern constraint failed


Here is the steps on how to fix it:

1) Remove any spaces from the thumbprint value.
2) There was a hidden character at the beginning and end of this string and once i removed it the underlying error in the cscfg file went away.
3) Save your changes and build!
4) Deploy your cloud service to Azure.


Hope this helps.

How to convert your WCF Service Library to WCF Service Application

Hi Folks,

If you have a WCF Service Library Project in VS 2012 and after you wrote some functional code and then you decided to change the project from a WCF Service Library that doesn't contain web configurations and can't be hosted in the IIS to a WCF service application that is hosted in IIS, this blog post will tell you how to do it in details.

The WCF service library doesn't contains the Web Configuration Tab when you open the project configuration (By right click on the project --> Project Properties) and it has only app.config file and not web.config file because it is not suppose to be hosted in the IIS.

To change your WCF service library to WCF Service Application:

1) Right click on the wcf project and click on unload project.
2) After the project is being unloaded, right click on the wcf project and click edit the project configuration file ".csproj".
3) Look for the following attribute :

 {3D9AD99F-2412-4246-B90B-4EAA41C64699};{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}

Change the project type to the following:

{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{fae04ec0-301f-11d3-bf4b-00c04f79efbc}

4) Reload the project.
5) Open the project configuration, you will be able to see the web tab to configure the wcf service.
6) Add web.cofig file to your project.
7) Copy any necassary keys from the app.config to the web.config.
8) Rename or delete the app.config file.
9) Make sure that you have correct port and end point configuration in the web.config.
10) Clean and Build your project. At this point the project is build with no errors.

After you run the project you will see that there is no .svc file that is the service application file used to call the WCF. But you need to have one in your project.

11) First Rename your Service.cs and IService.cs.
12) Add new WCF Service svc to your project and name it as you like.
13) Copy the code you have in the Service Class and the interface to the newly created service.
14) Compile the project.
15) Run the WCF Service application and now your WCF can be accessed through the web.


Note:
This works with VS 2012 project templates with Update 2 as well.

Hope this helps.



 

WCF Error: The service cannot be activated because it does not support ASP.NET compatibility.

Hi Folks,

I was developing a secure WCF service that allows only authenticated windows users to access this service in IIS 7.5. After disabling the anonymous access i figured that wsHttpBinding will not work because you have to enable it to make the WCF binding working, then i changed the WCF binding to basicHttpBinding and passed the user credentials from the web application by using below line of code:

C# Code:
svc.ClientCredentials.Windows.AllowedImpersonationLevel = TokenImpersonationLevel.Impersonation;

The above line passed the user credentials from the client web application to the service.

Passing the credentials from the client web application wasn't accepted by the WCF service because i was getting another error message from the wcf service:

"The underlying provider failed on Open WCF when hosting in IIS with impersonation is enabled"

Since i have enabled the impersonation to pass the user credentials from the web application to the wcf i was missing the step to add the following configuration in the web.config of the WCF service:

<system.serviceModel>
<serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true" multipleSiteBindingsEnabled="true" />
</system.serviceModel>

"The default is false. When this attribute is set to true, requests to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services flow through the ASP.NET HTTP pipeline, and communication over non-HTTP protocols is prohibited"

One last thing you should add in the service class "aspNetCompatibilityEnabled" attribute to comply with configuration entry otherwise still your service won't work because it will use the default IIS account to access your database.

C# Code:

[AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode = AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Allowed)]
public class myService : ImyService{ 
// your implementation to the service.
}


Hope this helps!

References:

1) WCF serviceHostingEnvironment element:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms731336(v=VS.110).aspx