WCF offers HTTP Service. Prior to Web API, we could use WCF(Windows Communication Foundation) to construct HTTP Service. WCF supports both REST and RPC Web Service model. There are still many programs used legacy WCF services to execute web service. When we tried to shift from Visual Studio 2015 or Visual Studio 2017 to the latest Visual Studio 2022, we find out that Visual Studio doesn’t offer WCF options. Actually, we can use Visual Studio Installer to select to install WCF. The picture is shown below
We can select Windows Communication Foundation which display under Individual Component manual. After installing, you can select to build WCF service.
WCF is different from Web API as its data structure is XML, not JSON. WCF not only supports HTTP, but also supports other communication protocols such as Named Pipes and UDP. Hope this article solve the programmer’s problem who has problems to activate WCF when using Visual Studio 2022.