Self-hosted WCF 4.5 WsHttpBinding -> 400 Bad Response - wcf

Question

I'm self-hosting a WCF WSHttpBinding bound service. When running, I can't get any variation on the service call to work. Can you diagnose this problem?
A basic GET from the address bar (multiple browsers) fails with 400 Bad Request. So does $.ajax with GET, POST with 'dataType': 'json' or 'dataType': 'jsonp'. I've tried variations on the base address. Including or omitting the WebInvokeAttribute doesn't make a difference. Whether or not the HTTP Method is matched or mismatched doesn't make a difference.
Setting the service endpoint to a narrower path and then browsing to paths outside of that endpoint appropriately results in an error (about the method not being allowed). Using GET from ajax without jsonp will fail due to cross-site-scripting protections as expected but I can avoid that scenario.
(There are a million versions of this question online. Some seem resolved, but with answers that don't help. Others are unresolved. This is not an exact duplicate of any of them.)
The WCF trace invariably indicates: "There is a problem with the XML that was received from the network." with "The body of the message cannot be read because it is empty" as the inner exception - even for a GET request for which there should be no body (right?). Even if I attempt to POST with json data of '' or '{}', I get still this error exactly.
This code sample is mostly from: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms730935.aspx, a .Net 4.5 WCF sample. The sample is bigger than necessary and I had to add binding.HostNameComparisonMode = HostNameComparisonMode.Exact; so that Windows would allow it to run without full admin rights. I also played with the relative url (now empty) to test.
Running this and pointing the browser to http://localhost:8000/ is properly serving the MEX/WSDL advertisement. This tells me that the webservice is running and that I am browsing to the right endpoint (plus or minus a service prefix, at least) and that Windows Firewall or permissions are not interfering with the process's ability to open or serve on a port. Yet http://localhost:8000/Ping just gets 400.
If I remember correctly (maybe not though), older versions of WCF and .NET didn't allow or didn't support self-hosted web-like protocols. I believe that's changed. Again, the serving of the MEX data isn't all that different from the custom stuff I want to serve - it's just coming from a different place in the same process.
sdb.IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults = true; seems to have no helpful effect here.
using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.ServiceModel;
using System.ServiceModel.Description;
using System.ServiceModel.Web;
namespace WCFWebHost
{
static class Program
{
[STAThread]
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Uri baseAddress = new Uri("http://localhost:8000/");
ServiceHost selfHost = new ServiceHost(typeof(EchoService), baseAddress);
try
{
var binding = new WSHttpBinding();
binding.HostNameComparisonMode = HostNameComparisonMode.Exact;
selfHost.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IEcho), binding, "");
ServiceMetadataBehavior smb = new ServiceMetadataBehavior();
smb.HttpGetEnabled = true;
selfHost.Description.Behaviors.Add(smb);
var sdb = selfHost.Description.Behaviors.Find<ServiceDebugBehavior>();
sdb.IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults = true;
selfHost.Open();
Console.WriteLine("Open and waiting.");
Console.ReadKey(true);
selfHost.Close();
}
catch (CommunicationException ce)
{
Console.WriteLine("An exception occurred: {0}", ce.Message);
selfHost.Abort();
}
}
}
[ServiceContract(Namespace = "http://echo")]
public interface IEcho
{
[OperationContract]
[WebInvoke(
Method = "GET",
RequestFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json,
ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json,
BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.WrappedRequest,
UriTemplate = "Ping")]
void Ping();
}
public class EchoService : IEcho
{
public void Ping()
{
}
}
}
The web config has this traces.svc configuration added:
<system.diagnostics>
<trace autoflush="true" />
<sources>
<source name="System.ServiceModel"
switchValue="Verbose, ActivityTracing"
propagateActivity="true">
<listeners>
<add name="traceListener"
type="System.Diagnostics.XmlWriterTraceListener"
initializeData="C:\Users\...\Traces.svclog" />
</listeners>
</source>
</sources>
</system.diagnostics>
===
Something that seems odd to me is that the traced exception seems to be coming from the error reporting itself. Is this error in the trace hiding better information about the original failure? Or am I just reading a re-throw wrong?
<Exception>
<ExceptionType>System.ServiceModel.ProtocolException, System.ServiceModel, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089</ExceptionType>
<Message>There is a problem with the XML that was received from the network. See inner exception for more details.</Message>
<StackTrace>
at System.Runtime.Diagnostics.EtwDiagnosticTrace.WriteExceptionToTraceString(XmlTextWriter xml, Exception exception, Int32 remainingLength, Int32 remainingAllowedRecursionDepth)
at System.Runtime.Diagnostics.EtwDiagnosticTrace.ExceptionToTraceString(Exception exception, Int32 maxTraceStringLength)
at System.Runtime.Diagnostics.EtwDiagnosticTrace.GetSerializedPayload(Object source, TraceRecord traceRecord, Exception exception, Boolean getServiceReference)
at System.Runtime.TraceCore.ThrowingException(EtwDiagnosticTrace trace, String param0, String param1, Exception exception)
at System.Runtime.ExceptionTrace.TraceException[TException](TException exception, String eventSource)
at System.Runtime.ExceptionTrace.AsError(Exception exception)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpPipeline.EnqueueMessageAsyncResult.CompleteParseAndEnqueue(IAsyncResult result)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpPipeline.EnqueueMessageAsyncResult.HandleParseIncomingMessage(IAsyncResult result)
at System.Runtime.AsyncResult.SyncContinue(IAsyncResult result)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpPipeline.EnqueueMessageAsyncResult..ctor(ReplyChannelAcceptor acceptor, Action dequeuedCallback, HttpPipeline pipeline, AsyncCallback callback, Object state)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpPipeline.EmptyHttpPipeline.BeginProcessInboundRequest(ReplyChannelAcceptor replyChannelAcceptor, Action dequeuedCallback, AsyncCallback callback, Object state)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelListener`1.HttpContextReceivedAsyncResult`1.ProcessHttpContextAsync()
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelListener`1.BeginHttpContextReceived(HttpRequestContext context, Action acceptorCallback, AsyncCallback callback, Object state)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SharedHttpTransportManager.EnqueueContext(IAsyncResult listenerContextResult)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SharedHttpTransportManager.OnGetContextCore(IAsyncResult listenerContextResult)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SharedHttpTransportManager.OnGetContext(IAsyncResult result)
at System.Runtime.Fx.AsyncThunk.UnhandledExceptionFrame(IAsyncResult result)
at System.Net.LazyAsyncResult.Complete(IntPtr userToken)
at System.Net.LazyAsyncResult.ProtectedInvokeCallback(Object result, IntPtr userToken)
at System.Net.ListenerAsyncResult.IOCompleted(ListenerAsyncResult asyncResult, UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes)
at System.Net.ListenerAsyncResult.WaitCallback(UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes, NativeOverlapped* nativeOverlapped)
at System.Threading._IOCompletionCallback.PerformIOCompletionCallback(UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes, NativeOverlapped* pOVERLAP)
</StackTrace>
<ExceptionString>System.ServiceModel.ProtocolException: There is a problem with the XML that was received from the network. See inner exception for more details. ---> System.Xml.XmlException: The body of the message cannot be read because it is empty.
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---</ExceptionString>
<InnerException>
<Exception>
<ExceptionType>System.Xml.XmlException, System.Xml, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089</ExceptionType>
<Message>The body of the message cannot be read because it is empty.</Message>
<StackTrace>
at System.Runtime.Diagnostics.EtwDiagnosticTrace.WriteExceptionToTraceString(XmlTextWriter xml, Exception exception, Int32 remainingLength, Int32 remainingAllowedRecursionDepth)
at System.Runtime.Diagnostics.EtwDiagnosticTrace.GetInnerException(Exception exception, Int32 remainingLength, Int32 remainingAllowedRecursionDepth)
at System.Runtime.Diagnostics.EtwDiagnosticTrace.WriteExceptionToTraceString(XmlTextWriter xml, Exception exception, Int32 remainingLength, Int32 remainingAllowedRecursionDepth)
at System.Runtime.Diagnostics.EtwDiagnosticTrace.ExceptionToTraceString(Exception exception, Int32 maxTraceStringLength)
at System.Runtime.Diagnostics.EtwDiagnosticTrace.GetSerializedPayload(Object source, TraceRecord traceRecord, Exception exception, Boolean getServiceReference)
at System.Runtime.TraceCore.ThrowingException(EtwDiagnosticTrace trace, String param0, String param1, Exception exception)
at System.Runtime.ExceptionTrace.TraceException[TException](TException exception, String eventSource)
at System.Runtime.ExceptionTrace.AsError(Exception exception)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpPipeline.EnqueueMessageAsyncResult.CompleteParseAndEnqueue(IAsyncResult result)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpPipeline.EnqueueMessageAsyncResult.HandleParseIncomingMessage(IAsyncResult result)
at System.Runtime.AsyncResult.SyncContinue(IAsyncResult result)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpPipeline.EnqueueMessageAsyncResult..ctor(ReplyChannelAcceptor acceptor, Action dequeuedCallback, HttpPipeline pipeline, AsyncCallback callback, Object state)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpPipeline.EmptyHttpPipeline.BeginProcessInboundRequest(ReplyChannelAcceptor replyChannelAcceptor, Action dequeuedCallback, AsyncCallback callback, Object state)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelListener`1.HttpContextReceivedAsyncResult`1.ProcessHttpContextAsync()
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelListener`1.BeginHttpContextReceived(HttpRequestContext context, Action acceptorCallback, AsyncCallback callback, Object state)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SharedHttpTransportManager.EnqueueContext(IAsyncResult listenerContextResult)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SharedHttpTransportManager.OnGetContextCore(IAsyncResult listenerContextResult)
at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SharedHttpTransportManager.OnGetContext(IAsyncResult result)
at System.Runtime.Fx.AsyncThunk.UnhandledExceptionFrame(IAsyncResult result)
at System.Net.LazyAsyncResult.Complete(IntPtr userToken)
at System.Net.LazyAsyncResult.ProtectedInvokeCallback(Object result, IntPtr userToken)
at System.Net.ListenerAsyncResult.IOCompleted(ListenerAsyncResult asyncResult, UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes)
at System.Net.ListenerAsyncResult.WaitCallback(UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes, NativeOverlapped* nativeOverlapped)
at System.Threading._IOCompletionCallback.PerformIOCompletionCallback(UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes, NativeOverlapped* pOVERLAP)
</StackTrace>
<ExceptionString>System.Xml.XmlException: The body of the message cannot be read because it is empty.</ExceptionString>
</Exception>
</InnerException>
</Exception>

Answer 1

WSHttpBinding creates a soap based binding. You cannot access this endpoint using a browser by navigating to the URL. You can access this binding by creating a service proxy or using wcftestclient (for testing). If you are looking for developing a REST endpoint then use webHttpBinding instead of wsHttpBinding.
Here is a quick sample on how to develop REST based service. Here is a post which describes the differences between webHttpBinding & wsHttpBinding.

Answer 2

Call WCF Service exposed with WSHttp binding
web.config Settings
<services>
<service name="MyWcfService.MyService">
<endpoint address="jh" binding="wsHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="NoSecurity" contract="MyWcfService.IMyService" />
</service>
</services>
html page
//SOAP request generated in order to call the Service method
var whRequest ="<s:Envelope xmlns:a=\"http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing\" xmlns:s=\"http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope\">" +
"<s:Header>" +
"<a:Action s:mustUnderstand=\"1\">http://tempuri.org/IMyService/GetData</a:Action>" +
"<a:MessageID>urn:uuid:7fdde7b6-64c8-4402-9af1-cc848f15888f</a:MessageID>" +
"<a:ReplyTo>" +
"<a:Address>http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing/anonymous</a:Address>" +
"</a:ReplyTo>" +
"<a:To s:mustUnderstand=\"1\">http://localhost:1415/MyService.svc/jh</a:To>" +
"</s:Header>" +
"<s:Body>" +
"<GetData xmlns=\"http://tempuri.org/\">"+
"<value>9</value>"+
"</GetData>" +
"</s:Body>" +
"</s:Envelope>";
$(document).ready(function () {
$("#btnWCFWSHttp").click(function () {
$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: "http://localhost:1415/MyService.svc/jh/",
data: whRequest,
timeout: 10000,
contentType: "application/soap+xml",
dataType: "xml",
async: false,
success: function (data, status, xhr) {
$(data).find("GetDataResponse").each(function () {
alert($(this).find("GetDataResult").text());
});
},
error: function (xhr, status, error) {
alert(error);
}
});
});
});