WCF + REST: Where is the request data?

Question

I'm currently developing a WCF RESTful service. Within the validation of the POST data, I am throwing exceptions if the request XML does not conform to our business rules.

The goal is to send an e-mail to the appropriate staff if a request comes in that considered invalid. But, along with the incoming request headers, method and URI, I'd like to also send the XML that was posted.

I have not been able to find a way to access this data. Is WCF actually destroying the request body/data before I have a chance to access it or am I missing something?

Your help is appreciated as I'm confused as to why I can't access the request data.

Answer 1

This unfortunately isn't supported- we had a similar need, and did it by calling internal members with reflection. We just use it in an error handler (so we can dump the raw request), but it works OK. I wouldn't recommend it for a system you don't own and operate though (eg, don't ship this code to a customer), since it can change at any time with a service pack or whatever.

public static string GetRequestBody()
{
    OperationContext oc = OperationContext.Current;

    if (oc == null)
        throw new Exception("No ambient OperationContext.");

    MessageEncoder encoder = oc.IncomingMessageProperties.Encoder;
    string contentType = encoder.ContentType;
    Match match = re.Match(contentType);

    if (!match.Success)
        throw new Exception("Failed to extract character set from request content type: " + contentType);

    string characterSet = match.Groups[1].Value;

    object bufferedMessage = operationContextType.InvokeMember("request",
        BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.GetField,
        null, oc, null);

    //TypeUtility.AssertType(bufferedMessageType, bufferedMessage);

    object messageData = bufferedMessageType.InvokeMember("MessageData",
        BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.GetProperty,
        null, bufferedMessage, null);

    //TypeUtility.AssertType(jsonBufferedMessageDataType, messageData);

    object buffer = jsonBufferedMessageDataType.InvokeMember("Buffer",
        BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.GetProperty,
        null, messageData, null);

    ArraySegment<byte> arrayBuffer = (ArraySegment<byte>)buffer;

    Encoding encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding(characterSet);

    string requestMessage = encoding.GetString(arrayBuffer.Array, arrayBuffer.Offset, arrayBuffer.Count);

    return requestMessage;
}