Question

The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel,
cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state.

What is this error all about, and how would I go about solving it?

Answer 1

You get this error because you let a .NET exception happen on your server side, and you didn’t catch and handle it, and didn’t convert it to a SOAP fault, either.

Now since the server side “bombed” out, the WCF runtime has “faulted” the channel – e.g. the communication link between the client and the server is unusable – after all, it looks like your server just blew up, so you cannot communicate with it any more.

So what you need to do is:

• always catch and handle your server-side errors – do not let .NET exceptions travel from the server to the client – always wrap those into interoperable SOAP faults. Check out the WCF IErrorHandler interface and implement it on the server side

• if you’re about to send a second message onto your channel from the client, make sure the channel is not in the faulted state:

  if(client.InnerChannel.State != System.ServiceModel.CommunicationState.Faulted)
  {
     // call service - everything's fine
  }
  else
  {
     // channel faulted - re-create your client and then try again
  }
  

  If it is, all you can do is dispose of it and re-create the client side proxy again and then try again