WCF : Calling an async. method

Just for a change, I was asked to help out on a non-Identity project.

There was a legacy host that only understood SOAP and a modern back-end that only supported REST web API.

So we need a bridge between them and I had to remember everything I had ever forgotten about WCF.

I needed my WCF method to call:

string response = await my_api.CallREST(parameter);

The problem is that the compiler expects the method to be decorated with async.

Aync. WCF?

Turns out you can.

My method looks like:

public async Task<validateresponse> ValidateParameter (parameter)

... and similarly for the interface.

And it works!

The word "async" doesn't appear anywhere is the WSDL. It appears to be completely ignored.

Enjoy!