WCF Inspect Messages

Question

I'm trying to implement a simple message inspector that writes the message to the debug window from an example on MSDN:

public class MyMessageInspector : IDispatchMessageInspector
{
    public object AfterReceiveRequest(ref Message request, IClientChannel channel, InstanceContext instanceContext)
    {
        System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(request.ToString());
        return null;
    }

    public void BeforeSendReply(ref Message reply, object correlationState)
    {
        System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(reply.ToString());
    }
}

The reply is writing as expected. However the request seems to be null. Any ideas on what could be going wrong? I'm using a Service Reference proxy with a console app as the client.

I'm using basicHttpbinding and hosting with IIS with svc file. The parameter for my web method is a complex type. I'm not sure if that makes a difference.

Answer 1

Try CreateBufferedCopy (i.e clone) of the message request first: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms734675.aspx (Copying a Message into a Buffer).

More info here under "Now for the message inspection part": http://binarymist.net/2010/06/14/message-inspection-in-wcf/