| name | legacy-service-endpoint-smoke |
| description | Smoke-test WCF and ASMX surfaces without standing up IIS |
| domain | testing |
| confidence | high |
| source | earned |
Context
Use this when a legacy .NET Framework solution has web-hosted WCF or ASMX endpoints that need believable regression coverage, but the repo does not have a cheap integration harness for IIS-hosted execution.
Patterns
- Instantiate the service class directly to prove the sample payload still comes back through the legacy code path.
- Reflect over service contracts and web-service attributes so transport-facing metadata stays visible in tests.
- Read the
.svc or .asmx host directive plus the service web.config to catch wiring drift such as missing metadata endpoints, binding names, or enabled HTTP protocols.
- In old-style NUnit projects, add direct project references for every exposed contract assembly used by the service signatures.
Examples
src\before\Fabrikam.EnterprisePizza.Legacy.Tests\SmokeTests\StoreDispatchServiceFixture.cs
src\before\Fabrikam.EnterprisePizza.Legacy.Tests\SmokeTests\PartnerSyncServiceFixture.cs
Anti-Patterns
- Only testing the underlying business class and calling that "service coverage"
- Depending on transitive project references for WCF contract DTOs in old-style test projects
- Requiring a full IIS-hosted integration setup for smoke tests that are really about endpoint shape and basic sample behavior