How to turn on WCF tracing?

Question

The following configuration taken from MSDN can be applied to enable tracing on your WCF service.

<configuration>
  <system.diagnostics>
    <sources>
      <source name="System.ServiceModel"
              switchValue="Information, ActivityTracing"
              propagateActivity="true" >
        <listeners>
             <add name="xml"/>
        </listeners>
      </source>
      <source name="System.ServiceModel.MessageLogging">
        <listeners>
            <add name="xml"/>
        </listeners>
      </source>
      <source name="myUserTraceSource"
              switchValue="Information, ActivityTracing">
        <listeners>
            <add name="xml"/>
        </listeners>
      </source>
    </sources>
    <sharedListeners>
        <add name="xml"
             type="System.Diagnostics.XmlWriterTraceListener"
             initializeData="Error.svclog" />
    </sharedListeners>
  </system.diagnostics>
</configuration>

To view the log file, you can use "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\bin\SvcTraceViewer.exe".

If "SvcTraceViewer.exe" is not on your system, you can download it from the "Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4" package here:

Windows SDK Download

You don't have to install the entire thing, just the ".NET Development / Tools" part.

When/if it bombs out during installation with a non-sensical error, Petopas' answer to Windows 7 SDK Installation Failure solved my issue.

In your web.config (on the server) add

<system.diagnostics>
 <sources>
  <source name="System.ServiceModel" switchValue="Information, ActivityTracing" propagateActivity="true">
   <listeners>
    <add name="traceListener" type="System.Diagnostics.XmlWriterTraceListener" initializeData="C:\logs\Traces.svclog"/>
   </listeners>
  </source>
 </sources>
</system.diagnostics>

Go to your Microsoft SDKs directory. A path like this:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.6 Tools

Open the WCF Configuration Editor (Microsoft Service Configuration Editor) from that directory:

SvcConfigEditor.exe

(another option to open this tool is by navigating in Visual Studio 2017 to "Tools" > "WCF Service Configuration Editor")

Open your .config file or create a new one using the editor and navigate to Diagnostics.

There you can click the "Enable MessageLogging".

More info: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms732009(v=vs.110).aspx

With the trace viewer from the same directory you can open the trace log files:

SvcTraceViewer.exe

You can also enable tracing using WMI. More info: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms730064(v=vs.110).aspx

Instead of you manual adding the tracing enabling bit into web.config you can also try using the WCF configuration editor which comes with VS SDK to enable tracing

https://stackoverflow.com/a/16715631/2218571