How: Web Service and handling Client Timeouts in the Web Service?

Question

I am trying to log what is happening when the Client gets a time out on a Web Service call.

Take a look at the HelloWorld code below. This is what I wish to do, but it seems IsClientConnected does not work as it allways return true.

[WebMethod]
public string HelloWorld() {
    //.. Do the Webservice stuff
    if (!Context.Response.IsClientConnected) {
        //Log some vital info about this call that timed out...
    }
    return "The WebService Result";
}

Does anyone know another way to check the state of the Web Service call?

When clients disconnect from a webservice call, there are no Exceptions thrown in the Web Service. The code continues to run untill it is done and then returns its result into nothingness (as the connection is closed).

Answer 1

I don't believe there will be an exception in general. Even if the service were sending back a long response, such that the outgoing transmission window closed, and timed out waiting to be able to send bytes, all of this would be occurring after the web method had returned back to ASP.NET.

What you should do is learn which web methods are taking too long. You can begin to do this by turning on tracing, as shown in "Enabling Tracing in ASP.NET Web Services". You may then need to go further, and profile the service to see where time is being spent.

You should also look carefully at the event logs. In particular, look for warning events from the "ASP.NET" event source. These come from ASP.NET Health Monitoring. I recommend you get to know the Health Monitoring system, as you may find it does many things for you that you'd have to write yourself, simply at the cost of configuration.