Question

I have a web service client in C# where I take the object returned by the webservice and pass it on to the following method in order to create an xml file:

XmlSerializer s = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
TextWriter sw = new StreamWriter(filename);
s.Serialize(sw, obj);
sw.Close();

However, there are fields that the webservice side claims to send while the resulting xml does not contain these (IU have done ‘update service’ in VS…).
Is there a way to get a dump of the data that the webclient receives at a lower level?

Answer 1

Two very good options:

• Wireshark – a network tracer, basically
• Fiddler – a proxy which records the requests and responses, and displays things nicely

Wireshark is less invasive than Fiddler as it doesn’t change anything that the client does, but Fiddler has support for HTTPS so long as you can persuade your client to accept its certificate (it’s effectively a man-in-the-middle attack as far as the protocol is concerned – but Fiddler is the man in the middle).

Additionally I’m pretty sure you could add SOAP filters etc within .NET to log what goes in and out – but the nice thing about Wireshark and Fiddler is that they’re separate from your process, so you can be absolutely sure that the results haven’t been messed around with by anything in your code or configuration.