Question

I’m trying to implement an IErrorHandler in my WCF service in order to log every exception that hits the service boundary before it’s passed to the client. I already use IErrorHandlers for translating Exceptions to typed FaultExceptions, which has been very useful. According to the MSDN for IErrorHandler.HandleError(), it’s also intended to be used for logging at the boundary.

The problem is, the HandleError function isn’t guaranteed to be called on the operation thread, so I can’t figure out how to get information about what operation triggered the exception. I can get the TargetSite out of the exception itself, but that gives me the interior method instead of the operation. I could also parse through the StackTrace string to figure out where it was thrown, but this seems a little fragile and hokey. Is there any consistent, supported way to get any state information (messages, operationdescription, anything) while in the HandleError function? Or any other ways to automatically log exceptions for service calls?

I’m looking for a solution to implement on production, using my existing logging framework, so SvcTraceViewer won’t do it for me.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I ended up putting the logging in IErrorHandler.ProvideFault() instead of IErrorHandler.HandlerError(). The ProvideFault call is made in the operation thread, so I can use OperationContext.Current to get some information to log.