What is the exact HTTP content used to call a WCF web service?

Question

I have a WCF service, which was created using the Visual Studio 2013 New Project wizard. I can call this service using the WCF Test Client which works fine. However, I'd like to call the service from the command line using curl.

What I've done is copied the Request content from the WCF Test Client, which looks like:

<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <s:Header>
    <Action s:mustUnderstand="1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2005/05/addressing/none">http://tempuri.org/IService1/TestStr</Action>
  </s:Header>
  <s:Body>
    <TestStr xmlns="http://tempuri.org/" />
  </s:Body>
</s:Envelope>

And stuck it in a file called Test.txt. Then, from the command line I did:

curl --verbose --header "Content-Type:text/xml; charset=utf-8" -X POST -d @Test.txt http://localhost:64777/Service1.svc

What I get back is:

* Adding handle: conn: 0x50e5a0
* Adding handle: send: 0
* Adding handle: recv: 0
* Curl_addHandleToPipeline: length: 1
* - Conn 0 (0x50e5a0) send_pipe: 1, recv_pipe: 0
* About to connect() to localhost port 64777 (#0)
*   Trying 127.0.0.1...
* Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1) port 64777 (#0)
> POST /Service1.svc HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.33.0
> Host: localhost:64777
> Accept: */*
> Content-Type:text/xml; charset=utf-8
> Content-Length: 343
>
* upload completely sent off: 343 out of 343 bytes
< HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
< Cache-Control: private
* Server Microsoft-IIS/8.0 is not blacklisted
< Server: Microsoft-IIS/8.0
< X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319
< X-SourceFiles: =?UTF-8?B?YzpcdXNlcnNcbWNocmlzdGVuc2VuXGRvY3VtZW50c1x2aXN1YWwgc3R1ZGlvIDIwMTNcUHJvamVjdHNcV2NmR2VuZXJpY3NcV2NmR2VuZXJpY3NcU2VydmljZTEuc3Zj?=
< X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
< Date: Tue, 06 May 2014 18:47:29 GMT
< Content-Length: 0
<
* Connection #0 to host localhost left intact

What's the difference between how the WCF Test Client calls my web service and how Curl calls my web service? Do I have the URL wrong? Am I missing some HTTP headers? Thanks!

Update:

I've tried the URL http://localhost:64777/Service1.svc/TestStr as well. I've also tried encoding the file:

%3Cs%3AEnvelope%20xmlns%3As%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fschemas.xmlsoap.org%2Fsoap%2Fenvelope%2F%22%3E%0A%20%20%3Cs%3AHeader%3E%0A%20%20%20%20%3CAction%20s%3AmustUnderstand%3D%221%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fschemas.microsoft.com%2Fws%2F2005%2F05%2Faddressing%2Fnone%22%3Ehttp%3A%2F%2Ftempuri.org%2FIService1%2FTestStr%3C%2FAction%3E%0A%20%20%3C%2Fs%3AHeader%3E%0A%20%20%3Cs%3ABody%3E%0A%20%20%20%20%3CTestStr%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Ftempuri.org%2F%22%20%2F%3E%0A%20%20%3C%2Fs%3ABody%3E%0A%3C%2Fs%3AEnvelope%3E

Both just result in Bad Request.

Answer 1

You can use Fiddler to capture the exact HTTP request. WCF tracing unfortunately does not capture the exact bytes sent over the wire. It reports a modified copy of the actual XML sent. Fiddler is not aware of web services so it does none of that.

Answer 2

It looks like you created a SOAP web service but I don't see any of the SOAP headers included in your example of the request data. In your web service code - add a line to capture the actual request being received by the service through the OperationContext object: OperationContext.Current.RequestContext.RequestMessage.ToString()

You should be able to capture the data from the RequestMessage property, save that to a file, and then submit using CURL.

(You might have to strip out the <Action> elements as I think those are added by WCF and might cause problems if you try to submit a request with them included)