There was an error downloading metadata from the address

Question

I am trying to add service reference.

There was an error downloading metadata from the address

this is the error which is being displayed again and again?

Answer 1

In Web.config file I changed :

 <endpoint address="" binding="pollingDuplexHttpBinding"
    contract="IAsyncTaskService"/>

to this :

<endpoint address="" binding="pollingDuplexHttpBinding"
    contract="DuplexService.Web.IAsyncTaskService"/>

and error was removed. Zeni

Answer 2

There are atleast 4 possibilities:

• The metadata exchange mex endpoint is not defined
• metadata exchange is not enabled
• You are using the wrong address
• You are being blocked by some security setting

Try the url in a browser to see that it returns a wsdl

Answer 3

Try rebuilding the project first, if that does not fix it, try changing the property httpGetEnabled from FALSE to TRUE in your web.config.

  <serviceBehaviors>
    <behavior name="serviceBehavior">
      <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>
      <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false"/>
    </behavior>
  </serviceBehaviors>

Answer 4

I had an issue like this one : Adding a service reference failed with a message "Method not allowed".

The wsdl worked fine in my browser..

The reason was that I configured the endpoint to listen on http://0.0.0.0:6000/mex, which the "Add Service Reference" tool doesn't seem to like. Changing it to a real IP address made it work (e.g. http://127.0.0.1:6000/mex)