Web Hosted WCF REST Service with plugable endpoints (is this possible)?

Question

I'm a bit new to WCF, so please bear with me. I have a very simple REST Service written up using .NET 3.5, which is exposed through a asp.net web application through a SVC file. Everything is working as expected.

What I would like to know is if it is possible for me to create a plugin structure in WCF, so that I can have third party developers write up expose their functionality through my service. I'm hoping it's possible to dynamically create my endpoints through code, at the moment everything is in my web.config and service.svc files (as far as exposing the contract).

In the end, what I would like to have an active running service that auto checks for new assemblies (if added to the plugins directory), and would automatically add new endpoints, which could have completely different functionalities. One could be a file transfer plugin, another could be a calculator, etc.

But first I need to know if it's even feasible... currently I'm looking into MEF to see if that might help out, as I'm used to just loading DLLs manually (in Desktop apps).

Answer 1

It is possible to use MEF through WCF, I have worked on a similar project in the past. You could expose functions from the plugin DLL's through MEF assume the implementer of the MEF interface is implimenting a function that starts a new WCF service with it's own end points, then call that function from the main service.

See some sample projects below, although none of them are doing what you are asking it is possible that the MEF plugins could have a service host that's starting their very own service with their own end points.

Creating WCF Service Extensibility through MEF

A sample demonstrating how WCF and MEF play together