FaultException<T>() exception thrown by the service is not caught by the client catch(FaultException<T>)

Question

Ok, I know I am missing something here. I have the following operation contract:

public double DivideByZero(int x, int y)
{                   
    if (y == 0) 
    { 
        throw new FaultException<ArgumentException>
          (new ArgumentException("Just some dummy exception")
          ,new FaultReason("some very bogus reason"), new FaultCode("007"));
    }
    return x / y;
}

And following is taken from the client:-

  Console.WriteLine("Enter the x value");
  string x = Console.ReadLine();
  Console.WriteLine("Enter the Y value");
  string y = Console.ReadLine();
  try
  {
      double val = client.DivideByZero(Convert.ToInt32(x), Convert.ToInt32(y));
      Console.WriteLine("The result is " + val.ToString());
  }
  catch(FaultException<ArgumentException> exp)  
  {
      Console.WriteLine("An ArgumentException was thrown by the service "+ exp.ToString());    
  }
  catch (Exception exp)
  {
      Console.WriteLine(exp.ToString());
  }

In the above case catch(FaultException exp) (the first catch block with ArgumentException in the client code) block does not get executed. However, when I remove ArgumentException to have catch(FaultException exp), the same catch block gets executed. I am not sure about this as I am throwing FaultException from my operation contract. Am I missing anything here.

Appreciate your help, Ashish

EDIT :- When I updated the service reference in my client, I was able to catch the FaultException<ArgumentException> exception.

Answer 1

Try it with FaultException<DataContract> for some arbitrary data contract type. If you look at the generated code for the fault in the proxy class, I bet you'll see that the ArgumentException is not serializing the way you expect it to.

Answer 2

If you are deriving Exception class, make sure that your custom exception has the serialization constructor

protected MyCustomException(
          SerializationInfo info,
          StreamingContext context)
            : base(info, context) { }