WCF IClientMessageInspector Logging Discrepancy Regarding Action - wcf

Question

I am logging outgoing WCF Soap requests from my application, and discovered a discrepancy between what I'm logging and what actually goes out to the server via the wire.
Here is what I'm logging:
<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<s:Header>
<Action s:mustUnderstand="1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2005/05/addressing/none">http://tempuri.org/myinterface</Action>
</s:Header>
<s:Body>
<myinterface xmlns="http://tempuri.org/">
...
Here is what actually goes out (captured with WireShark):
<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<s:Body>
<myinterface xmlns="http://tempuri.org/">
...
You'll notice that the WireShark capture does not have the Header or Action elements.
I only noticed this because I tried pushing my logged request out through SoapUI.
I'm using this code to log the request:
public class InspectorBehavior : IEndpointBehavior
{
public void ApplyClientBehavior(ServiceEndpoint endpoint, ClientRuntime clientRuntime)
{
clientRuntime.MessageInspectors.Add(new WCFMessageInspector());
}
And:
public class WCFMessageInspector : IClientMessageInspector
{
public object BeforeSendRequest(ref System.ServiceModel.Channels.Message request, IClientChannel channel)
{
Log(request.ToString());
return null;
}
And:
client.Endpoint.Address = new System.ServiceModel.EndpointAddress(address);
client.Endpoint.Behaviors.Add(new InspectorBehavior());
Does anyone know if there's a way to capture exactly what is going out (verbatim), without any post-processing as shown above?

Answer 1

You can configure WCF Message Logging in your App.config to log messages at transport level.
This should capture the message as late as possible:
For outgoing messages, logging happens immediately after the message leaves user code and immediately before the message goes on the wire.
<system.diagnostics>
<sources>
<source name="System.ServiceModel.MessageLogging">
<listeners>
<add name="messages"
type="System.Diagnostics.XmlWriterTraceListener"
initializeData="c:\logs\messages.svclog" />
</listeners>
</source>
</sources>
</system.diagnostics>
<system.serviceModel>
<diagnostics>
<messageLogging
logEntireMessage="true"
logMalformedMessages="true"
logMessagesAtServiceLevel="false"
logMessagesAtTransportLevel="true"
maxMessagesToLog="1000"
maxSizeOfMessageToLog="1000000"/>
</diagnostics>
</system.serviceModel>

Answer 2

You can capture exact content via custom MessageEncoder, unlike message inspectors (IDispatchMessageInspector / IClientMessageInspector) it sees original byte content including any malformed XML data.
However it's a bit harder to implement this approach. You have to wrap a standard textMessageEncoding as custom binding element and adjust config file to use that custom binding.
Also you can see as example how I did it in my project - wrapping textMessageEncoding, logging encoder, custom binding element and config.