Getting RAW Soap Data from a Web Reference Client running in ASP.net

I made following changes in web.config to get the SOAP (Request/Response) Envelope. This will output all of the raw SOAP information to the file trace.log.

<system.diagnostics>
  <trace autoflush="true"/>
  <sources>
    <source name="System.Net" maxdatasize="1024">
      <listeners>
        <add name="TraceFile"/>
      </listeners>
    </source>
    <source name="System.Net.Sockets" maxdatasize="1024">
      <listeners>
        <add name="TraceFile"/>
      </listeners>
    </source>
  </sources>
  <sharedListeners>
    <add name="TraceFile" type="System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener"
      initializeData="trace.log"/>
  </sharedListeners>
  <switches>
    <add name="System.Net" value="Verbose"/>
    <add name="System.Net.Sockets" value="Verbose"/>
  </switches>
</system.diagnostics>

You can implement a SoapExtension that logs the full request and response to a log file. You can then enable the SoapExtension in the web.config, which makes it easy to turn on/off for debugging purposes. Here is an example that I have found and modified for my own use, in my case the logging was done by log4net but you can replace the log methods with your own.

public class SoapLoggerExtension : SoapExtension
{
    private static readonly ILog log = LogManager.GetLogger(MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().DeclaringType);
    private Stream oldStream;
    private Stream newStream;

    public override object GetInitializer(LogicalMethodInfo methodInfo, SoapExtensionAttribute attribute)
    {
        return null;
    }

    public override object GetInitializer(Type serviceType)
    {
        return null;
    }

    public override void Initialize(object initializer)
    {

    }

    public override System.IO.Stream ChainStream(System.IO.Stream stream)
    {
        oldStream = stream;
        newStream = new MemoryStream();
        return newStream;
    }

    public override void ProcessMessage(SoapMessage message)
    {

        switch (message.Stage)
        {
            case SoapMessageStage.BeforeSerialize:
                break;
            case SoapMessageStage.AfterSerialize:
                Log(message, "AfterSerialize");
                    CopyStream(newStream, oldStream);
                    newStream.Position = 0;
                break;
                case SoapMessageStage.BeforeDeserialize:
                    CopyStream(oldStream, newStream);
                    Log(message, "BeforeDeserialize");
                break;
            case SoapMessageStage.AfterDeserialize:
                break;
        }
    }

    public void Log(SoapMessage message, string stage)
    {

        newStream.Position = 0;
        string contents = (message is SoapServerMessage) ? "SoapRequest " : "SoapResponse ";
        contents += stage + ";";

        StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(newStream);

        contents += reader.ReadToEnd();

        newStream.Position = 0;

        log.Debug(contents);
    }

    void ReturnStream()
    {
        CopyAndReverse(newStream, oldStream);
    }

    void ReceiveStream()
    {
        CopyAndReverse(newStream, oldStream);
    }

    public void ReverseIncomingStream()
    {
        ReverseStream(newStream);
    }

    public void ReverseOutgoingStream()
    {
        ReverseStream(newStream);
    }

    public void ReverseStream(Stream stream)
    {
        TextReader tr = new StreamReader(stream);
        string str = tr.ReadToEnd();
        char[] data = str.ToCharArray();
        Array.Reverse(data);
        string strReversed = new string(data);

        TextWriter tw = new StreamWriter(stream);
        stream.Position = 0;
        tw.Write(strReversed);
        tw.Flush();
    }
    void CopyAndReverse(Stream from, Stream to)
    {
        TextReader tr = new StreamReader(from);
        TextWriter tw = new StreamWriter(to);

        string str = tr.ReadToEnd();
        char[] data = str.ToCharArray();
        Array.Reverse(data);
        string strReversed = new string(data);
        tw.Write(strReversed);
        tw.Flush();
    }

    private void CopyStream(Stream fromStream, Stream toStream)
    {
        try
        {
            StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(fromStream);
            StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(toStream);
            sw.WriteLine(sr.ReadToEnd());
            sw.Flush();
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            string message = String.Format("CopyStream failed because: {0}", ex.Message);
            log.Error(message, ex);
        }
    }
}

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Method)]
public class SoapLoggerExtensionAttribute : SoapExtensionAttribute
{
    private int priority = 1; 

    public override int Priority
    {
        get { return priority; }
        set { priority = value; }
    }

    public override System.Type ExtensionType
    {
        get { return typeof (SoapLoggerExtension); }
    }
}

You then add the following section to your web.config where YourNamespace and YourAssembly point to the class and assembly of your SoapExtension:

<webServices>
  <soapExtensionTypes>
    <add type="YourNamespace.SoapLoggerExtension, YourAssembly" 
       priority="1" group="0" />
  </soapExtensionTypes>
</webServices>