Most efficient way to adapt WCF web service client to changed WSDL definition

Question

I am building a web service client using .NET Visual Studio 2010 by adding a service reference into my project.

Now the web service I am referencing there is actually one I am implementing myself, which will eventually run on one of our servers. During development the web service is still likely to change as we are in the prototyping stage at the moment.

Therefore my question: Once I have changed the web service interface, the wsdl, which I am referencing in my client project; what's the easiest then to update the client - can I just re-generate the service reference in that client project somehow? Say if I added a new operation in the wsdl and introduced new data types, what would be my best way forward then in terms of bringing the now obselete generated code from the added service reference up to date?

And is referencing the actual wsdl the best way to do it, rather than "discovering services in the project" (one of the options of the add service reference dialog)?

Thanks all for your help.

Cheers, Stevo

Answer 1

You can just right click on the service reference and select Update Service Reference.

Usually that works fine. Sometimes I've had to delete and readd the reference, that always works.

I add the references from the .svc file, not the wsdl directly.