WCF converting decimal value to zero - wcf

I am using SOAPUI to call a WCF endpoint with a decimal value. Somewhere the value is getting converted to a zero.
I can call the same service, with the same parameters from a .NET application and the value is not getting altered. I can de-serialise and inspect the values being passed from my .NET app and SoapUI, and both de-serialised versions of the object are identical.
I have been able to capture the request in Fiddler after it has left SoapUI and the decimal value is still in tact so I know it is getting converted down stream somewhere.
This post suggests that this can happen when the proxy is generated:
int properties are 0 when consuming WCF in .Net 2 - but evidence is not pointing to this being a problem in the service, not the client.
Apologies I can't share WSDL nor XML due to corporate privacy restrictions.

The resolution in my case was to change the order of my request parameters.
I was able to determine this by enabling WCF tracing, including message payloads, and then comparing the payloads from my .NET application against the payloads from SoapUI.
The payloads are massively different, but ignoring namespaces, correlation ids, keys and dates I was able to determine that my problematic parameter was in a different position. Changing the order within SoapUI XML request resolved the issue.

Related

I'm testing a WCF Service and an EF Data layer, receiving String columns as (null), but receive integers as real data. Why are the strings null?

I'm building a multi-layered Windows VS C# solution that has a WCF Service Library project with EF6.2 loaded, and an ADO.NET Data layer with EF6.2 also.
The EDMX model is built as a 'database first' set of tables from my MSSQL Server Express 2016 server on my laptop. My WCF Service Interface and code
only have properties and methods for one of the tables at this point. And that table has also been built out in logic and data layer methods.
So, I'm testing that service now with the WCF Test Client, and I'm receiving some integer data correctly in my service's response from to the data layer, but no string data.
While testing my "GetMemberByID" method, it returns all String column results as a value of "(null)", and a type of "NullObject",
but returns Integers with their actual value. The WCF Soap response shows the returned String values as "". But,
the integers are returned like this: "7". There are over 50 data rows in my test database which is used as the source
for the EF6.2 EDMX build. My App.config's in data and service layers are referencing the same (localdb)\ V13.0 server and database.
Has anyone had this issue, and can you tell me what I'm missing? The MSSQL database was originally an (OleDb) MS Access database and I imported it into
MSSQL Server. Thanks in advance.
It seems that there is something wrong with the serialization process. On my side, the string field can be returned properly. By default, the DataContractSerializer is used to deserialize/deserialize the complex object data.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/wcf/feature-details/using-data-contracts
The most possible reason might be that the nullable field is not decorated by the [DataMember] attribute. Please check if the column of the DataContract autogenerated on the client-side contains the [DataMember] attribute.
http://sivakrishnakuchi.blogspot.com/2010/05/troubleshoot-wcf-service-returning.html
Feel free to let me know if the problem still exists.
Okay, I found my mistake. When translating the business domain objects back to the Service objects in the Service.cs code file, I was only translating the MemberID and the RowVersion - and no other columns. So, the only thing that was showing up in the WCF Test Client result was the MemberID and the RowVersion - which happen to be the only two non-strings in my entity. All the string types were null because I was not translating them back into the Service. Thanks for taking a look at this, Abraham, but you made me start looking closer, and thanks for the advice. The MS Documentation was helpful, too. Once I did a full "step into" debug trace from the UI through to the Data Layer and back, I was able to see the data translation failure. One more thing, before I could debug step by step all the way to the Data layer and back to the Service layer, I had to fix my "Underlying database did not open" issue that so many have had. I'm hosting my service through my local IIS, and had to make a few changes to the IIS application concerning the user credentials. My App.config is set to use "Integrated Security=True" - which is a "passthrough" credential in the IIS App pools. I had my IIS App set to "Specific User", but was not using a UserID/Password in my Connection String. Once I changed my IIS App to "Passthrough" - I was able to connect, and to debug to the DAL and back.

wcf HMAC always fails

I'm trying to implement a HMAC authorization solution with my SOAP WCF service. I already have a message inspector for the client and the server. The server seems to add a "Action" header to the message that is not in the request (verified by fiddler). I then just do
message.WriteBodyContents(xdw);
Which gets around that but then some of the xml elements are self closed (/>) or some are closed like "".
Any suggestions?
EDIT.
I also want the solution to be easy, so far this is all done with an attribute on the service and a one line statement for the client.
Using the System.Security.Cryptography.Xml.XmlDsigC14NTransform class in .Net normalizes the XML so that two XMLs with different syntax but similar data are normalized and can be compared byte for byte for a hash.

Add Service Reference "___ is already defined"a

I have a WCF web service that I am working on and I built it and was delighted to find that I could use complex types in it. I added some and then realized that they were still not useable as those types on the client end. This is an internal web service so these types are known on both sides. Anyway, that's not the problem, as I took the complex types out, but I think it may have left some residual issues.
When I then changed my additions to all be base types (string, date, int, etc) then added the web service to the client project, I got a "[enumtype] is already defined" error. It occurred in the reference.cs file so I opened it up. Sure enough there were duplicate enums. Plus there were a bunch of helper (serializing) functions. The duplicate enum was from code that had been in there before I picked this web service up to work on. It had not caused an issue previously.
I opened up the reference.cs for the previous (successful) service reference. It did not have the duplicates or functions and also I noticed a difference between the entries that were in there. The reference.cs that was failing to compile had this additional attribute in several places:
[System.ServiceModel.XmlSerializerFormatAttribute()]
I also see that my new failed code was using string[] and the old was using ArrayOfString. I did not intentionally change this, but must have somehow set something differently in the process.
Does anyone have a few clues?
Thanks!
Have you tried deleting the service reference from the project and re-adding it? You may have to manually remove some (or all) of the serviceModel contents too. If that is the only Service Reference then definitely remove the serviceModel element contents too.
Once its all gone, re-add the Service Reference. If you're still having problems then it may be that the service metadata is generating invalid WSDL causing the duplicate enums.
UPDATE: Just for verifying the WSDL is not valid, you could try creating the service proxy manually using the SvcUtil command line utility. It generates your proxy code like Visual Studio does and may give you more troubleshooting info.
After a lot of experimentation this is what I found out:
Our web service up to this point was using the Request / Response classes for input and output. There were required in 1.0, and were a carry over from that. I attempted to create a simple entry point that sent in a string and returned a string. This compiled ok, but:
Although you can use regular types for input and output, if you are using Request / Response types exchanges for other entry points, then you cannot.
Mixed method of request / response and regular types will compile, but it will not successfully import (at least into Visual Studio 2008). What ends up being created seems to be an attempt to create input and output classes for all of the functions to translate them to their complex types, along with the Request / Response types which creates duplicate entries and will not compile.
This then also means that you cannot send in a request object and return a string (which is how I found out that this was not allowed) – this generated an error in the unit test, which started me down this path.
So if you have a request / response web service, all functions must follow that protocol.

Culture-related issue with WCF and System.Double

My problem resembles this question but is not exactly the same: Change culture when deserializing WCF service
I have built a WCF (web) service running on Windows 7 (IIS 7.5) using VS 2008. One of the properties in my webservice is typed as a System.Double. When building my own client for testing the service, Visual Studio requiers my to write - for example - a number like 123.4 (using a dot as the decimal point). But when using WcfTestClient.exe to access the service and entering a number on the field (like 123.4, still using a dot) it gives me the message "123.4 the is not a valid value for this type". I should mention I live in Sweden and comma is the culture-specific decimal point symbol here.
If I instead use a comma (,) as the decimal point when using WcfTestClient, that is accepted. The problem is that when I debug my webservice code I can see that the comma gets removed by the serializing process somehow and the number has been changed to 1234. Not good.
In my dev environment I have both the service and client running on the same machine. The webservice is running under the NetworkService account which uses the same locale.
My question is: how do I in WCF make sure that whatever number that's supplied on this field/property to the webservice, if containing a comma the comma should NOT be stripped away?
I thought this was automatically handled in the framework. I don´t really care if the number is stored with a comma or a dot as long as the value stays the same.
I am using the DataContractSerializer and auto-implemented properties, like this: [DataMember] public double Price { get; set; }
I've also tested building a property using Convert.ToDouble(value, System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture) in the setter with no visible change in outcome in the WCF Service.
Can you tell if it is the wcf test client, or your web service that is messing up the serialization? Maybe try enabling full message logging in WCF and check the incoming message body to see if it contains "1234" or "123,4" or "123.4". Maybe (hopefully) its just a bug in the WCF test client.
Link to MSDN page to set up message logging: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms730064.aspx
And set:
logEntireMessage="true"
logMessagesAtServiceLevel="false"
logMessagesAtTransportLevel="true"
I think that should give you a service log that has the raw incoming message. You might have to turn off transport level security (SSL) if you have it enabled.
I had the same problem with System.Decimal.
You could see in the XML tab of WcfTestClient that the data sent was indeed without a decimal separator.
However, the bug seems to be within your regional settings of the computer you use.
I changed my regional settings to use "." (dot) as separator for numbers and was able to test it successfully. Now you could see that the data sent (again in the XML tab) and when debugging my service contained the correct separator.
This problem arises from the use of the data type Double.The Double value type represents a double-precision 64-bit number with values ranging from negative 1.79769313486232e308 to positive 1.79769313486232e308. It is intended to represent values that are extremely large (such as distances between planets or galaxies) or extremely small (the molecular mass of a substance in kilograms). See more here.
In this case, when I try to test a WCF service from WCF Test Client with double parameter must be a smaller number of 9.9999999999 because the decimal point is removed.
In this example I put as parameter value 9.947814E+22 and if we click the XML tab, we can see that the comma is not deleted.
Therefore it is recommended to change the data type of the parameter from Double to decimal when working with higher decimal values​​.

Fix problematic server response in WCF

I am using WCF as a client for a java web service. I have not control over the server side.
In the response I get from the web service there is no xmlns attribute on the first element inside the soap headers. Because of this WCF returns null as the result of web service call.
Apart from the missing xmlns the response is perfect and if I add the xmlns using fiddler then everything works as expected. I don't know enough about SOAP to know if the xmlns attribute is really required.
Is there a way to avoid this problem, either getting WCF to ignore the missing xmlns attribute or even a hook that would allow me to manually munge the response before it gets to WCF?
This appears to be a pretty old question, so I'm not sure if you ever addressed this. If you are working with a WCF client for a Java Axis service, you will find that you will need to get used to using MessageInspectors to override the behavior of the request and response.
Using the AfterReceiveReply method you should be able to copy the original message and alter the headers. Also check out Step 5 from this MSDN article.
You can't alter the response headers directly in this method as far as I can see, because they are read-only, therefore copying and then replacing the reply with a doctored version is the only way I can think of to correct the missing namespace.