Where to trap failed connection on WCF calling class?

Question

I\'m trying to write a class that encapsulates WCF calls (the client is Silverlight, if it matters). It all works swimmingly, but I\'m not sure how to trap a connection fail

Answer 1

Your ChannelFactory instance is going to be in the "Aborted" state when this timeout occurs. You'll find that the exception is being thrown not when the exception happens in the call, but when you call _channel.Dispose().

You'll need to guard against this exception somehow. The simplest way would be to put a try/catch around the contents of your dispose method, but it would be better if you checked the state of the _channel instance before trying to close/dispose.

This is why you are still getting the exception - it's not being handled here.

Update:

Based on your stack trace, it looks like the framework is trying to execute your callback delegate and is getting an exception there. You responded elsewhere that try/catching the contents of your delegate doesn't solve the issue... what about inner exceptions? What is the full output of TheException.ToString()?

I trolled through the .NET Framework and it is indeed allowed to travel all the way back to the threadpool (at least in the stacktrace you have here) which would cause an unhandled exception and your thread to die. If worse comes to worse, you can always take over the threading... spin up your own thread and inside call the service synchronously, rather than using the builtin async pattern (unless this is a WCF Duplex type of communication, which I don't think it is).

I still think the full exception information (if there is anything more) might be useful.