See what XML is being serialized down the wire for a WCF Service

Question

I have a WCF service that I pass a lit of objects down from the server to the client, what I would like to do is to know what exactly is getting passed down to the client.

How can I see the unecrypted serialized payload that is sent over the wire?

Answer 1

Use Fiddler on the client machine. It acts as a local proxy and allows you to inspect the HTTP traffic.

Note that there are some limitations with HTTPS traffic, but since you are testing your own WCF service, you can temporarily switch to HTTP for inspection of the packets payload, even if you intend to deploy it as HTTPS in production.

Answer 2

WCF has very extensive tracing support which allows you to capture and later view and analyze all messages going over the wire.

Check out the MSDN docs and other sources for great information:

• Configuring WCF Tracing
• WCF Service Trace Viewer Tool
• WCF Tracing FAQ
• WCF Tracing and Message Logging