How do I retrieve version information from a WCF Web Service?

Question

I want to log the assembly version information into a log file each time my WCF web service is called. I know that in an application the My object has an Application object which has the Info structure, that contains the Version string that I can use. How can I get the version information for the WCF service to a log?

Answer 1

You will need to create either a separate service method GetServiceVersionInfo() that you can call when needed, or you could include the service's version info in some headers that travel along with the message.

If you want to add header to each and every message, the best way to go is create an extension called a MessageInspector. This is a small chunk of code that intercepts every message (in your case: every message going out of the server) and adds some header (or manipulates the actual message).

Read up on Message inspectors in this blog post showing how to write a message inspector, or read the MSDN docs on the topic to get started.