How to add a custom HTTP header to every WCF call

Question

I have a WCF service that is hosted in a Windows Service  Clients that using this service must pass an identifier every time they re calling service methods  because that identifier is important for what the called method should do   I thought it is a good idea to somehow put this identifier to the WCF header information   If it is a good idea  how can I add the identifier automatically to the header information  In other words  whenever the user calls the WCF method  the identifier must be automatically added to the header   UPDATE  Clients that are using the WCF service are both Windows applications and Windows Mobile application  using Compact Framework

User · Answer

If I understand your requirement correctly, the simple answer is: you can't.

That's because the client of the WCF service may be generated by any third party that uses your service.

IF you have control of the clients of your service, you can create a base client class that add the desired header and inherit the behavior on the worker classes.

User · Answer

If you want to add custom HTTP headers to every WCF call in an object oriented way  look no further   Just as in Mark Good s and paulwhit s answer  we need to subclass IClientMessageInspector to inject the custom HTTP headers into the WCF request   However  lets make the inspector more generic by accepting an dictionary containing the headers we want to add   public class HttpHeaderMessageInspector   IClientMessageInspector       private Dictionary lt string  string gt  Headers       public HttpHeaderMessageInspector Dictionary lt string  string gt  headers                Headers   headers             public object BeforeSendRequest ref Message request  IClientChannel channel                   ensure the request header collection exists         if  request Properties Count    0    request Properties HttpRequestMessageProperty Name     null                        request Properties Add HttpRequestMessageProperty Name  new HttpRequestMessageProperty                           get the request header collection from the request         var HeadersCollection     HttpRequestMessageProperty request Properties HttpRequestMessageProperty Name   Headers              add our headers         foreach  var header in Headers  HeadersCollection header Key    header Value           return null                    other unused interface methods removed for brevity         Just as in Mark Good s and paulwhit s answer  we need to subclass IEndpointBehavior to inject our HttpHeaderMessageInspector into our WCF client   public class AddHttpHeaderMessageEndpointBehavior   IEndpointBehavior       private IClientMessageInspector HttpHeaderMessageInspector       public AddHttpHeaderMessageEndpointBehavior Dictionary lt string  string gt  headers                HttpHeaderMessageInspector   new HttpHeaderMessageInspector headers              public void ApplyClientBehavior ServiceEndpoint endpoint  ClientRuntime clientRuntime                clientRuntime ClientMessageInspectors Add HttpHeaderMessageInspector                     other unused interface methods removed for brevity         The last part needed to finish our object oriented approach  is to create a subclass of our WCF auto-generated client  I used Microsoft s WCF Web Service Reference Guide to generate a WCF client    In my case  I need to attach an API key to the x-api-key HTML header   The subclass does the following    calls the constructor of the base class with the required parameters  in my case a EndpointConfiguration enum was generated to pass into the constructor - maybe your implementation won t have this  Defines the headers that should be attached to every requests Attaches AddHttpHeaderMessageEndpointBehavior to the client s Endpoint behaviors   public class Client   MySoapClient       public Client string apiKey    base EndpointConfiguration SomeConfiguration                var headers   new Dictionary lt string  string gt                          x-api-key     apiKey                     var behaviour   new AddHttpHeaderMessageEndpointBehavior headers           Endpoint EndpointBehaviors Add behaviour             Finally  use your client   var apiKey    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX   var client   new Client  apiKey   var result   client SomeRequest     The resulting HTTP request should contain your HTTP headers and look something like this   POST http   localhost 8888 api soap HTTP 1 1 Cache-Control  no-cache  max-age 0 Connection  Keep-Alive Content-Type  text xml  charset utf-8 Accept-Encoding  gzip  deflate x-api-key  XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX SOAPAction   http   localhost 8888 api ISoapService SomeRequest  Content-Length  144 Host  localhost 8888   lt s Envelope xmlns s  http   schemas xmlsoap org soap envelope   gt     lt s Body gt       lt SomeRequestxmlns  http   localhost 8888 api    gt     lt  s Body gt   lt  s Envelope gt

User · Answer

If you just want to add the same header to all the requests to the service  you can do it with out any coding  Just add the headers node with required headers under the endpoint node in your client config file   lt client gt       lt endpoint address  http   localhost       gt         lt headers gt           lt HeaderName gt Value lt  HeaderName gt         lt  headers gt       lt  endpoint gt

User · Answer

Context bindings in  NET 3 5 might be just what you re looking for  There are three out of the box  BasicHttpContextBinding  NetTcpContextBinding  and WSHttpContextBinding  Context protocol basically passes key-value pairs in the message header  Check out Managing State With Durable Services article on MSDN magazine

User · Answer

Here is another helpful solution for manually adding custom HTTP Headers to your client WCF request using the ChannelFactory as a proxy  This would have to be done for each request  but suffices as a simple demo if you just need to unit test your proxy in preparation for non- NET platforms      create channel factory   proxy     using  OperationContextScope scope   new OperationContextScope proxy         OperationContext Current OutgoingMessageProperties HttpRequestMessageProperty Name    new HttpRequestMessageProperty                 Headers                              MyCustomHeader   Environment UserName                  HttpRequestHeader UserAgent   My Custom Agent                               perform proxy operations

User · Answer

var endpoint   new EndpointAddress new Uri RemoteAddress                  new     AddressHeader CreateAddressHeader                          APIKey                                                       bda11d91-7ade-4da1-855d-24adfe39d174

User · Answer

You add it to the call using   using  OperationContextScope scope   new OperationContextScope  IContextChannel channel         MessageHeader lt string gt  header   new MessageHeader lt string gt   secret message        var untyped   header GetUntypedHeader  Identity    http   www my-website com        OperationContext Current OutgoingMessageHeaders Add untyped           now make the WCF call within this using block     And then  server-side you grab it using   MessageHeaders headers   OperationContext Current IncomingMessageHeaders  string identity   headers GetHeader lt string gt   Identity    http   www my-website com

User · Answer

The advantage to this is that it is applied to every call  Create a class that implements IClientMessageInspector    In the BeforeSendRequest method  add your custom header to the outgoing message   It might look something like this  public object BeforeSendRequest ref System ServiceModel Channels Message request  System ServiceModel IClientChannel channel        HttpRequestMessageProperty httpRequestMessage      object httpRequestMessageObject      if  request Properties TryGetValue HttpRequestMessageProperty Name  out httpRequestMessageObject                 httpRequestMessage   httpRequestMessageObject as HttpRequestMessageProperty          if  string IsNullOrEmpty httpRequestMessage Headers USER AGENT HTTP HEADER                          httpRequestMessage Headers USER AGENT HTTP HEADER    this m userAgent                      else               httpRequestMessage   new HttpRequestMessageProperty            httpRequestMessage Headers Add USER AGENT HTTP HEADER  this m userAgent           request Properties Add HttpRequestMessageProperty Name  httpRequestMessage             return null     Then create an endpoint behavior that applies the message inspector to the client runtime   You can apply the behavior via an attribute or via configuration using a behavior extension element  Here is a great example of how to add an HTTP user-agent header to all request messages   I am using this in a few of my clients   You can also do the same on the service side by implementing the IDispatchMessageInspector  Is this what you had in mind  Update   I found this list of WCF features that are supported by the compact framework   I believe message inspectors classified as  Channel Extensibility  which  according to this post  are supported by the compact framework

User · Answer

You can specify custom headers in the MessageContract   You can also use  lt  endpoint  headers that are stored in the configuration file and will be copied allong in the header of all the messages sent by the client service  This is usefull to add some static header easily

User · Answer

Found another approach here  SoapServiceClient client   new SoapServiceClient    using new OperationContextScope client InnerChannel          HttpRequestMessageProperty requestMessage   new HttpRequestMessageProperty        requestMessage Headers  quot MyHttpHeader quot      quot MyHttpHeaderValue quot       OperationContext Current OutgoingMessageProperties HttpRequestMessageProperty Name    requestMessage          var result   client MyClientMethod

User · Answer

This works for me  TestService ReconstitutionClient  serv   new TestService TestClient     using  OperationContextScope contextScope   new OperationContextScope  serv InnerChannel        HttpRequestMessageProperty requestMessage   new HttpRequestMessageProperty        requestMessage Headers  apiKey     ConfigurationManager AppSettings  apikey        OperationContext Current OutgoingMessageProperties HttpRequestMessageProperty Name           requestMessage      serv Method Testarg

User · Answer

This is what worked for me  adapted from Adding HTTP Headers to WCF Calls     Message inspector used to add the User-Agent HTTP Header to the WCF calls for Server public class AddUserAgentClientMessageInspector   IClientMessageInspector       public object BeforeSendRequest ref System ServiceModel Channels Message request  IClientChannel channel                HttpRequestMessageProperty property   new HttpRequestMessageProperty             var userAgent    MyUserAgent 1 0 0 0            if  request Properties Count    0    request Properties HttpRequestMessageProperty Name     null                        var property   new HttpRequestMessageProperty                property Headers  User-Agent     userAgent              request Properties Add HttpRequestMessageProperty Name  property                     else                         HttpRequestMessageProperty request Properties HttpRequestMessageProperty Name   Headers  User-Agent     userAgent                    return null             public void AfterReceiveReply ref System ServiceModel Channels Message reply  object correlationState                    Endpoint behavior used to add the User-Agent HTTP Header to WCF calls for Server public class AddUserAgentEndpointBehavior   IEndpointBehavior       public void ApplyClientBehavior ServiceEndpoint endpoint  ClientRuntime clientRuntime                clientRuntime MessageInspectors Add new AddUserAgentClientMessageInspector                public void AddBindingParameters ServiceEndpoint endpoint  BindingParameterCollection bindingParameters                   public void ApplyDispatchBehavior ServiceEndpoint endpoint  EndpointDispatcher endpointDispatcher                   public void Validate ServiceEndpoint endpoint                  After declaring these classes you can add the new behavior to your WCF client like this   client Endpoint Behaviors Add new AddUserAgentEndpointBehavior

User · Answer

A bit late to the party but Juval Lowy addresses this exact scenario in his book and the associated ServiceModelEx library   Basically he defines ClientBase and ChannelFactory specialisations that allow specifying type-safe header values  I suggesst downloading the source and looking at the HeaderClientBase and HeaderChannelFactory classes    John

User · Answer

This is similar to NimsDotNet answer but shows how to do it programmatically   Simply add the header to the binding   var cl   new MyServiceClient     var eab   new EndpointAddressBuilder cl Endpoint Address    eab Headers Add         AddressHeader CreateAddressHeader  ClientIdentification       Header Name                                          string Empty               Namespace                                           JabberwockyClient         Header Value  cl Endpoint Address   eab ToEndpointAddress

[wcf] How to add a custom HTTP header to every WCF call?

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