How to make sure you don't get WCF Faulted state exception?

Question

I am getting this exception:

The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication becaus

Answer 1

Similar to Ryan Rodemoyer's answer, I found that when the UriTemplate on the Contract is not valid you can get this error. In my case, I was using the same parameter twice. For example:

/Root/{Name}/{Name}

Answer 2

You should avoid putting client proxies in using blocks.

Answer 3

This error can also be caused by having zero methods tagged with the OperationContract attribute. This was my problem when building a new service and testing it a long the way.

Answer 4

If the transfer mode is Buffered then make sure that the values of MaxReceivedMessageSize and MaxBufferSize is same. I just resolved the faulted state issue this way after grappling with it for hours and thought i'll post it here if it helps someone.

Answer 5

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Update:

This linked answer describes a cleaner, simpler way of doing the same thing with C# syntax.

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Original post

This is Microsoft's recommended way to handle WCF client calls:

For more detail see: Expected Exceptions

try
{
    ...
    double result = client.Add(value1, value2);
    ...
    client.Close();
}
catch (TimeoutException exception)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Got {0}", exception.GetType());
    client.Abort();
}
catch (CommunicationException exception)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Got {0}", exception.GetType());
    client.Abort();
}

Additional information

So many people seem to be asking this question on WCF that Microsoft even created a dedicated sample to demonstrate how to handle exceptions:

c:\WF_WCF_Samples\WCF\Basic\Client\ExpectedExceptions\CS\client

Download the sample: C# or VB

Considering that there are so many issues involving the using statement, (heated?) Internal discussions and threads on this issue, I'm not going to waste my time trying to become a code cowboy and find a cleaner way. I'll just suck it up, and implement WCF clients this verbose (yet trusted) way for my server applications.