.NET Log or View Call / Response of a SOAP WebService

Question

What is the best way to inspect the calls & responses from a web service in .NET?
I'm interacting with a Web Service written in Perl and running into issues.
How can I capture the text of the call and response?

UPDATE:
Based on comment to clarify: I'd like to do it via .NET so I can log it or email it when an issue arises.

Answer 1

Fiddler is your best friend in the wonky world of web services.

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No, it doesn't do anything inside the code as pointed out. Nor do you want it to--debugging should NOT change semantics of the process, or you are debugging your debugging code.

Also, I hearts me some wireshark, but fiddler is a bit better for HTTP stuff as it is designed to focus on HTTP. If I'm grabbing bytes off the wire, it is wireshark all the way.

Answer 2

Personally, I like to use a packet sniffer, like Wireshark. It's a great tool for inspecting any sort of network traffic.

Answer 3

You can do this by creating a SoapExtension and enabling it in your web service client:

System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapExtension Class (MSDN)

The link above provides a skeleton of sample code that logs requests/responses to a file.

To enable in your application add the following to your web.config or app.config:

<webServices>
    <soapExtensionTypes>
        <add type="YourNamespace.TraceExtension, AssemblyName" 
             priority="0" group="High"/>
    </soapExtensionTypes>
</webServices>

My own SOAP tracing extension is implemented in its own project/assembly. Whenever I need to debug the request/response I just drop the DLL in the application folder (/bin for ASP.NET) and add the reference to the config file as above.

For example:

<webServices>
   <soapExtensionTypes>
      <add 
         type="DebugTools.SOAP.SOAPTrace.SoapTraceExtension, DebugTools.SOAP" 
         priority="0" group="High"/>
   </soapExtensionTypes>
</webServices>

DebugTools.SOAP.SOAPTrace is the namespace of the SoapTraceExtension
DebugTools.SOAP is the name of the assembly containing the soap trace code.

Answer 4

In a WCF web service or client, you can simply configure tracing and/or message logging. This can be done at runtime, with no code changes.