Question

I’m attempting to extend this answer on SO to make a WCF client retry on transient network failures and handle other situations that require a retry such as authentication expiration.

Question:

What are the WCF exceptions that need to be handled, and what is the correct way to handle them?

Here are a few sample techniques that I’m hoping to see instead of or in addition to proxy.abort():

• Delay X seconds prior to retry
• Close and recreate a New() WCF client. Dispose the old one.
• Don’t retry and rethrow this error
• Retry N times, then throw

Since it’s unlikely one person knows all the exceptions or ways to resolve them, do share what you know. I’ll aggregate the answers and approaches in the code sample below.

    // USAGE SAMPLE
    //int newOrderId = 0; // need a value for definite assignment
    //Service<IOrderService>.Use(orderService=>
    //{
    //  newOrderId = orderService.PlaceOrder(request);
    //}




    /// <summary>
    /// A safe WCF Proxy suitable when sessionmode=false
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="codeBlock"></param>
    public static void Use(UseServiceDelegateVoid<T> codeBlock)
    {
        IClientChannel proxy = (IClientChannel)_channelFactory.CreateChannel();
        bool success = false;
        try
        {
            codeBlock((T)proxy);
            proxy.Close();
            success = true;
        }
        catch (CommunicationObjectAbortedException e)
        {
                // Object should be discarded if this is reached.  
                // Debugging discovered the following exception here:
                // "Connection can not be established because it has been aborted" 
            throw e;
        }
        catch (CommunicationObjectFaultedException e)
        {
            throw e;
        }
        catch (MessageSecurityException e)
        {
            throw e;
        }
        catch (ChannelTerminatedException)
        {
            proxy.Abort(); // Possibly retry?
        }
        catch (ServerTooBusyException)
        {
            proxy.Abort(); // Possibly retry?
        }
        catch (EndpointNotFoundException)
        {
            proxy.Abort(); // Possibly retry?
        }
        catch (FaultException)
        {
            proxy.Abort();
        }
        catch (CommunicationException)
        {
            proxy.Abort();
        }
        catch (TimeoutException)
        {
         // Sample error found during debug: 

         // The message could not be transferred within the allotted timeout of 
         //  00:01:00. There was no space available in the reliable channel's 
         //  transfer window. The time allotted to this operation may have been a 
         //  portion of a longer timeout.

            proxy.Abort();
        }
        catch (ObjectDisposedException )
        {
            //todo:  handle this duplex callback exception.  Occurs when client disappears.  
            // Source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1427926/detecting-client-death-in-wcf-duplex-contracts/1428238#1428238
        }
        finally
        {
            if (!success)
            {
                proxy.Abort();
            }
        }
    }

Answer 1

EDIT: There seems to be some inefficiencies with closing and reopening the client multiple times. I’m exploring solutions here and will update & expand this code if one is found. (or if David Khaykin posts an answer I’ll mark it as accepted)

After tinkering around with this for a few years, the code below is my preferred strategy (after seeing this blog posting from the wayback machine) for dealing with WCF retries and handling exceptions.

I investigated every exception, what I would want to do with that exception, and noticed a common trait; every exception that needed a “retry” inherited from a common base class. I also noticed that every permFail exception that put the client into an invalid state also came from a shared base class.

The following example traps every WCF exception a client could through, and is extensible for your own custom channel errors.

Sample WCF Client Usage

Once you generate your client side proxy, this is all you need to implement it.

Service<IOrderService>.Use(orderService=>
{
  orderService.PlaceOrder(request);
}

ServiceDelegate.cs

Add this file to your solution. No changes are needed to this file, unless you want to alter the number of retries or what exceptions you want to handle.

public delegate void UseServiceDelegate<T>(T proxy);

public static class Service<T>
{
    public static ChannelFactory<T> _channelFactory = new ChannelFactory<T>(""); 

    public static void Use(UseServiceDelegate<T> codeBlock)
    {
        IClientChannel proxy = null;
        bool success = false;


       Exception mostRecentEx = null;
       int millsecondsToSleep = 1000;

       for(int i=0; i<5; i++)  // Attempt a maximum of 5 times 
       {
           // Proxy cann't be reused
           proxy = (IClientChannel)_channelFactory.CreateChannel();

           try
           {
               codeBlock((T)proxy);
               proxy.Close();
               success = true; 
               break;
           }
           catch (FaultException customFaultEx)
           {
               mostRecentEx = customFaultEx;
               proxy.Abort();

               //  Custom resolution for this app-level exception
               Thread.Sleep(millsecondsToSleep * (i + 1)); 
           }

           // The following is typically thrown on the client when a channel is terminated due to the server closing the connection.
           catch (ChannelTerminatedException cte)
           {
              mostRecentEx = cte;
               proxy.Abort();
               //  delay (backoff) and retry 
               Thread.Sleep(millsecondsToSleep  * (i + 1)); 
           }

           // The following is thrown when a remote endpoint could not be found or reached.  The endpoint may not be found or 
           // reachable because the remote endpoint is down, the remote endpoint is unreachable, or because the remote network is unreachable.
           catch (EndpointNotFoundException enfe)
           {
              mostRecentEx = enfe;
               proxy.Abort();
               //  delay (backoff) and retry 
               Thread.Sleep(millsecondsToSleep * (i + 1)); 
           }

           // The following exception that is thrown when a server is too busy to accept a message.
           catch (ServerTooBusyException stbe)
           {
              mostRecentEx = stbe;
               proxy.Abort();

               //  delay (backoff) and retry 
               Thread.Sleep(millsecondsToSleep * (i + 1)); 
           }
           catch (TimeoutException timeoutEx)
           {
               mostRecentEx = timeoutEx;
               proxy.Abort();

               //  delay (backoff) and retry 
               Thread.Sleep(millsecondsToSleep * (i + 1)); 
           } 
           catch (CommunicationException comException)
           {
               mostRecentEx = comException;
               proxy.Abort();

               //  delay (backoff) and retry 
               Thread.Sleep(millsecondsToSleep * (i + 1)); 
           }


           catch(Exception e)
           {
                // rethrow any other exception not defined here
                // You may want to define a custom Exception class to pass information such as failure count, and failure type
                proxy.Abort();
                throw e;  
           }
       }
       if (success == false && mostRecentEx != null) 
       { 
           proxy.Abort();
           throw new Exception("WCF call failed after 5 retries.", mostRecentEx );
       }

    }
}