Checking WCF Service is up or not

Question

Hi,

I want to check from client whether the hosted WCF service is running or up. What is the best practice for checking this? I have came across lots of solutions , here and there but not a concrete one. Could you please help us with an example?

Thanks in advance.

Regards

ronit_rc

Answer 1

Hi Ronit_rc

The simplest way is to add a Ping method to your service. If you have a lot of services and want a more generic solution then look at this code plex project.

WCF Ping

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/90244/WCF-Ping

Regards,

JAXN

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MCTS: .NET Framework 4, Service Communication Applications

Answer 2

Hi,

I want to check from my client code whether the service is running or not at runtime.

Could it be done?Is there any examples regarding this?

Regards

ronit_rc

Answer 3

Hi ronit_rc

You would call the Ping method runtime. There is to my knowledge no other way do this without making a method that you call yourself.

Just make this method:

[OperationContract]
public void Ping(){}

You could even make it return a string with a small report - where you report whether all resources that are required by your service is also available.

Like:

<timestamp> DB access: OK
<timestamp> Backend Service access: OK

or you could return a more structured report object.

This takes only a few minuts to add - I have done this several times to provide easy smoke-testing of services. What are you missing in such a solution?

Regards,

JAXN

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MCTS: .NET Framework 4, Service Communication Applications

Answer 4

Implement WCF Discovery:

This is an overview:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd456791.aspx

This is a walkthrough:

http://weblogs.asp.net/gsusx/archive/2009/02/13/using-ws-discovery-in-wcf-4-0.aspx

Answer 5

I always wish to have this feature in WCF out-of-box, but Unfortunately, WCF does not provide a built-in mechanism to support this. I can see of using .net extensibility feature to use here.

For concrete implementation refer below link which provide a simple heart beat mechanism based on the messages that include a "Ping” header, so the client application can determine at any point whether the service is up or down.

http://weblogs.asp.net/cibrax/archive/2010/05/17/enabling-service-availability-in-wcf-services.aspx

This link may also provide some other thought.

http://geekswithblogs.net/LeonidGaneline/archive/2008/05/07/wcf-availability-of-the-wcf-services.aspx

Somehow I feel AppFebric in .Net 4.0 may have some built-in API to check this as this is designed for Service High Availability.

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Lingaraj Mishra

Answer 6

I guess you can perform a HTTP request to the WCF service and see if the status code that comes back is 200. If so then the service is available else the HTTP status code should give you the reason for the service not available.

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Rajesh S V

Answer 7

Hi Ronit,

You can use WCF discovery to check if these services are up and running.

Regards,

nairooz Nilafdeen

Answer 8

 

Hi,

Thanks for your help. But I beleive WCF discovery is suitable only in intranet environment. Is it a solution for Internet environment?

Also, I have 7 services. If I use  Ping method mechanism, then I have to implemet it for each services. Can I do anything generic?

Regards

ronit_rc