Question

I want to know whether the WCF service is available or not before making a service call.
What could be the best way?

How about using this:

bool isServiceUp = true;
try
{
   string address = "http://localhost/MyService.svc?wsdl";

 MetadataExchangeClient mexClient = new MetadataExchangeClient(new Uri(address), MetadataExchangeClientMode.HttpGet);
   MetadataSet metadata = mexClient.GetMetadata();
// if service down I get the exception
}
   catch (Exception ex)
{
    isServiceUp = false;
} 

My service is using net tcp binding.

can i use it for net tcp binding?

EDIT: Thanks JaredPar. Suppose my first call gets succeeded and while second call the server is down. So before making the service call i check the state of the proxy which is in the OPEN state and hence i make the service call which eventually gets time out. I haven’t set any open or close time out so by default it takes 1 minute and the call gets caught in the Fault event handler of the service in which i dispose the proxy. But by that time UI hangs , what shd i do?

Please guide.

Answer 1

This type of test is simply not possible. There is no way to reliably detect if a given WCF, or really any networking call, will succeed before you attempt it. There are simply too many variables which are outside your control.

• The physical network
• The power source on the machine where WCF is running
• The actual WCF program
• The stability of the hard drive on the computer where your code or the WCF code is running

Any of these can be terminated / changed at any point in time. Hence it’s impossible to predict whether or not a given call will succeed.

The best way to approach this problem is simply make the call add the code to handle the cases where it does fail.