Endpoint check for correctness - c#

I have been searching the internet and have not been able to find a solution to my problem.
I want to be able to check the correctness and availability of a WCF service through a passed in endpoint. So the user inputs an endpoint (it changes a lot) and I want to be able to make sure it is valid by some form of ping or check.
I have been looking at MSDN but it does not seem to do what I am looking for.

You could set the OpenTimeout of your clients binding to a reasonable short time and call your clients Open() method.
If the service is not there/answering, you will get a System.ServiceModel.EndpointNotFoundException. Or your service could implement a "Ping()" method, that gives you a sensible result you can check, and call this "Ping()" without calling Open() first. So you can check availability and correctness with one call.

You could download excellent example from IDesign site (the writer of 'Programming WCF Services')
Here is the link: iDesign
Take a look on 'Ad-hoc Discovery' and 'Metadata Explorer'

Related

How to create a SOAP Request C#

I know there are thousands of step-by-step samples for consuming a SOAP project with C#.
Actually, I tried many of those but didn't really get to understand how it works, how were needed components built or how to integrate a certificate for a secure connection.
I would be really grateful if any of you guys have a magical resource, since I read somewhere I shouldn't do it this way or another, I really want to know this well.
Thank you,
Best regards.
It's really simple actually. Suppose you have a service at http://myhost.com/XService.svc - right click References in the solution explorer and choose "Add a service reference" (older versions of VS called it web reference/web service)
A wizard appears; pop your URL into it, set a few options and hit Go
You'll get a client class set created that references the service, with methods that take a set of typed parameters based on what the service said it wanted when VS queried its WSDL. You might use it like:
var c = new XServiceClient();
bool result = c.CreateNewPerson("John Smith", 30, "js#hotmail.com");
The service client handles all of the xml creation, tcp socket connection, data transmission etc necessary to pass those 3 values you sent, to the web service so that the relevant method is called, the response is returned etc

.NET SOAP communication with separate certificates for signing and encryption

I try to configure client communicating with SOAP service written in Java, yet I failed so far. While it's pretty easy to connect with that service using SoapUI (I just need to put these two certificates in adequate places and it just works) it's pretty far from being easy (and intuitive) in C#.
Service uses two different certificates - one for signing message (binary token) and one for TLS encryption. I implemented my own classes for that thing using this tutorial:
https://learn.microsoft.com/pl-pl/dotnet/framework/wcf/extending/how-to-use-separate-x-509-certificates-for-signing-and-encryption
Thanks to that I'm able to connect and send request, but that's not the end of the problems. Next error was "The incoming message was signed with a token which was different from what used to encrypt the body. This was not expected."
According to my research I should just erase whole Security header and configure my client to allow unsecured response. Therefore I should implement my own MessageEncoder what I actually did using this:
https://learn.microsoft.com/pl-pl/dotnet/framework/wcf/samples/custom-message-encoder-custom-text-encoder
I only added one extra function that should erase security header, just like #nuronce did in this thread:
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/16de05ed-3776-40e5-b576-139603e4b374/the-incoming-message-was-signed-with-a-token-which-was-different-from-what-used-to-encrypt-the-body?forum=wcf
But that's still not the end of the problems... Right now it says: "The message version of the outgoing message (Soap11 (http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/) AddressingNone (http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2005/05/addressing/none)) does not match that of the encoder (Soap12 (http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope) Addressing10 (http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing)). Make sure the binding is configured with the same version as the message."
That's weird because in every place with MessageVersion property in my custom encoder classes it's set to MessageVersion.Soap11 as default value that should not be modified, because I don't change anything in my CustomTextMessageEncodingBindingSection.
For every solution WCF gives me another problem and I'm losing my patience for that, because these solutions are not so easy to find and adjust to my needs. I'm also pretty sure that even if I go through my current problem - I will find another one, maybe harder or even impossible to resolve.
Are there other .NET libraries that will allow me to use two different certificates by default and save my code from growing, hard to understand convolutions? And if there is none, how can I deal with WCF?

Problems calling ServiceStack services in-process with Validation & Filters

I need to be able to call my SS services from the controllers of an MVC application. Ideally i'd like to call them in-process to avoid the overhead of buiding a http request etc.
From scouring documentation I feel there are 2 suggested methods, but neither work fully.
1) ServiceGateway - Use the service gateway. This calls validation filters, but does not call other customer filters I've added. No option to applyFilters.
2) HostContext.ServiceController.Execute - There is a dedicated option on this method called applyFilters, and when I set it to true it works and applies filters and validation (though it only executes GlobalFilters, not TypedRequestFilters). However, if [CacheResponse] attribute is set on the service it overwrites and flushes a response to my client overriding the flow of the MVC controller and i don't know how to stop this. It does not do this if I set to applyFilters to false or if I take CacheResponse off. Changing the priority of the cache has no effect.
I'm calling the Execute method as follows from within an Action method on my controller:
HostContext.ServiceController.Execute(serviceRequest, HostContext.GetCurrentRequest(), true);
Before this method even returns control a response is flushed to the webpage on Chrome and then nothing/null is returned from method.
I feel there is regarding point 1) a feature missing and point 2) a bug in the implementation, though am not confident enough in my knowledge of SS to remedy either! Please help!
Thanks.
Filters are executed as part of the HTTP Request Pipeline and can terminate the current Request with a custom HTTP Response. You can check IRequest.IsClosed after executing the Request to check if it has been terminated by a Request Filter. They're behavior is incompatible with internal Gateway requests so there's no option to execute them in the Gateway.
I've marked these ServiceController methods as an In Process Request in this commit which should resolve the issue with the [CacheResponse] attribute which ignores In Process Requests.
This change is available from v4.5.13 that's now available on MyGet.

c# how to manage wcf service proxy lifecycle on client side?

I have written a WCF service with some regular functionality (add user, remove, search, update...). The implementation of this functionality is in entity framework (with sql DB).
Now I want to use it in the client side.
And I have some basic questions:
I have many calls to the WCF methods in the client side - should I try catch every time each call?
Every time I want to call a method, for example AddUser(User user), I need to make an instance of my service, like that:
WcfService client = new WcfService();
client.AddUser(user);
And in another place I write:
WcfService client = new WcfService(); //Again making a new instance...
client.UpdateUser(user);
Should I make one instance for all the application for my wcf service?
Or every time to make a new instance before I call to a method? (as in my example above).
Thanks very much !
In many cases, you want to reuse the same client proxy, as this connection method yields the best performance. Reusing the same proxy can be particularly beneficial if you use security features, which have a high initial security negotiation cost. Note: you surely need to check the state of the client proxy before using.
In the event that reusing the same client proxy is not an option, then consider using a ChannelFactory proxy that uses caching.
The following link provides a good explanation along with best practice recommendations:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wenlong/archive/2007/10/27/performance-improvement-of-wcf-client-proxy-creation-and-best-practices.aspx
(i)You can make an instance one time for a service, and use the same client whenever you need to make a method call. if you are aborting or closing the connection then you need to create each time.
(ii)It is better if you use try catch methods in each methods, so it will be easy to close the connection and identify the exceptions.

Test availablity of WCF URL

I am trying to test the availablity of WCF service as a part of a tool.
Is it possible or do I have to call a method inside that WCF to really test that?
I have tried client.downloadurl(wcfurl) but it is failing.
Any Ideas?
To test the existence of a WCF service all you need to do is enter the url of the service into a browser:
http://www.yourdomain.com/yourservice.svc
You should be able to make the same http request in code and check the response. If it's OK then the service exists.
This doesn't check the methods on the service though.
Create a HTTP request using the URL of your service. Don't forget to set the timeout. The response code 200 means it is all OK
I would try this tool from microsoft.
They provide you this, simply launch the tool and you will see the available methods as exposed on your IService.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb552364.aspx
You can provide the IService code for feedback.

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