I recently reused my generic, disposable WCF service client, and made some changes to make it simpler to use and easier to unit test. The original client was used like this:

using (var wrapper = new ServiceClientWrapper<
    ManagementServiceClient, IManagementService>(config))
{
    wrapper.CreateServiceClient().CallService();
}

…where config is a WebServiceConfig - a simple Data Bag which contains details of the service to call:

using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates;

public class WebServiceConfig
{
    public string Binding { get; set; }

    public string Endpoint { get; set; }

    public bool IgnoreSslErrors { get; set; }

    public X509Certificate2 ClientCertificate { get; set; }
}

Having worked with the client on previous projects I’d noticed some problems with it; every time you use it you have to write a using statement and call CreateServiceClient(). That’s a minor inconvenience, but a bigger problem comes with unit testing code that uses it - newing up the ServiceClientWrapper makes it impossible to mock, but the class being IDisposable means it’s intended for one-shot uses and isn’t an appropriate candidate to be injected as a dependency. I worked around this by injecting in a ServiceClientWrapperFactory class which I could mock, but at some point I read Jimmy Bogard advise that your design may be flawed if you’re making objects which do nothing but create other objects, and while I generally have no problem changing a design to make it more testable, I knew this was one of those occasions.

So I had these problems to solve:

  1. Stop the user having to write using statements
  2. Make the client injectable
  3. Make the client mockable or stubbable
  4. Get rid of the factory class which did nothing but make clients for unit tests

I’d also noticed a lot of boilerplate code to handle exceptions and retry service calls, and I wanted to get rid of that, too.

Thanks to these requirements, the class I wrote ended up being quite different to the previous client. It’s still IDisposable (more on why later) but it hides the process of creating and using a service client inside two Execute() methods. The previous client being constructed with a config limited its use to the service and setup defined therein - the new client is passed a config through its Execute() methods, which means the same instance can be used to call different services with different settings.

This is the new class I wrote:

using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Security;
using System.ServiceModel;

public class ServiceClientWrapper<TClient, TService> : IDisposable
    where TClient : ClientBase<TService>, TService
    where TService : class
{
    private TClient _serviceClient;

    public void Execute(
        WebServiceConfig config,
        Action<TService> serviceCall,
        Action<CommunicationException> commsExceptionHandler = null,
        int numberOfTimesToRetry = 1)
    {
        Execute<object>(
            config,
            service => { serviceCall.Invoke(service); return null; },
            commsExceptionHandler,
            numberOfTimesToRetry);
    }

    public TResult Execute<TResult>(
        WebServiceConfig config,
        Func<TService, TResult> serviceCall,
        Action<CommunicationException> commsExceptionHandler = null,
        int numberOfTimesToRetry = 1)
    {
        SetupSecurity(config);

        var i = 0;
        CommunicationException thrownException = null;

        while (i < numberOfTimesToRetry)
        {
            DisposeExistingServiceClientIfRequired(); 

            try
            {
                return serviceCall
                    .Invoke(CreateServiceClient(config));
            }
            catch (CommunicationException faultEx)
            {
                thrownException = faultEx;

                if (commsExceptionHandler != null)
                {
                    try
                    {
                        commsExceptionHandler
                            .Invoke(thrownException);
                    }
                    catch (CommunicationException rethrownEx)
                    {
                        thrownException = rethrownEx;
                    }
                }

                ++i;
            }
            finally
            {
                DisposeExistingServiceClientIfRequired();
            }
        }

        throw thrownException;
    }

    private static void SetupSecurity(WebServiceConfig config)
    {
        if (config.IgnoreSslErrors)
        {
            ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback =
                (obj, certificate, chain, errors) => true;
        }
        else
        {
            ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback =
                (obj, certificate, chain, errors) => 
                    errors == SslPolicyErrors.None;
        }
    }

    protected virtual TService CreateServiceClient(
        WebServiceConfig config)
    {
        // Or you can use:
        // _serviceClient = (TClient)typeof(TClient).GetInstance(
        //     config.Binding,
        //     new EndpointAddress(config.Endpoint));
        _serviceClient = (TClient)Activator.CreateInstance(
            typeof(TClient),
            config.Binding,
            new EndpointAddress(config.Endpoint));

        return _serviceClient;
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        DisposeExistingServiceClientIfRequired();
    }

    private void DisposeExistingServiceClientIfRequired()
    {
        if (_serviceClient != null)
        {
            try
            {
                if (_serviceClient.State == CommunicationState.Faulted)
                {
                    _serviceClient.Abort();
                }
                else
                {
                    _serviceClient.Close();
                }
            }
            catch
            {
                _serviceClient.Abort();
            }

            _serviceClient = null;
        }
    }
}

At its simplest you use it like this - note that this time it’s a member of the class using it - it’s been injected in through the constructor, for instance:

_serviceClientWrapper.Execute(
    config,
    service => service.DoSomething());

If you have a service which returns a value, you can call it like this:

var response = _serviceClientWrapper.Execute(
    config,
    service => service.GetResponse());

If you want to handle CommunicationExceptions yourself, you can pass in a handler:

var response = _serviceClientWrapper.Execute(
    config,
    service => service.GetResponseWhichMightError(),
    commsException => SendMeAnEmailAboutThis(commsException));

…and if you want to retry a service call when CommunicationExceptions are thrown, you can pass in the number of times to retry:

var response = _serviceClientWrapper.Execute(
    config,
    service => service.GetUnreliableResponse(),
    commsException => SendMeAnEmailAboutThis(commsException),
    numberOfTimesToRetry: 3);

And so to the testability! Moving the WCF client creation code into a dedicated virtual CreateServiceClient method makes the client wrapper stubbable:

using System.ServiceModel;

public class StubServiceClientWrapper<TClient, TService> : 
    ServiceClientWrapper<TClient, TService>
    where TClient : ClientBase<TService>, TService
    where TService : class
{
    private readonly TService _serviceClientToReturn;

    public StubServiceClientWrapper(TService serviceClientToReturn)
    {
        _serviceClientToReturn = serviceClientToReturn;
    }

    protected override TService CreateServiceClient(
        WebServiceConfig config)
    {
        return _serviceClientToReturn;
    }
}

…where the stub is created with a TService instance to return from the overridden CreateServiceClient method. Then - as an example - a Service class like this:

public class Service
{
    private readonly WebServiceConfig _config;
    
    private readonly ServiceClientWrapper<
        ManagementServiceClient, IManagementService> 
            _serviceClientWrapper;

    public Service(
        WebServiceConfig config,
        ServiceClientWrapper<
            ManagementServiceClient, IManagementService> 
                serviceClientWrapper)
    {
        _config = config;
        _serviceClientWrapper = serviceClientWrapper;
    }

    public string GetResponse()
    {
        return _serviceClientWrapper.Execute(
            _config,
            serviceClient => serviceClient.GetResponse());
    }
}

…can be tested using a combination of the stub and a mock (using Moq in this case) like this:

var config = new WebServiceConfig
{
    Binding = "MyBinding",
    Endpoint = "http://service.com/Service.svc"
};

var wcfClient = new Mock<IManagementService>();
wcfClient.Setup(wcf => wcf.GetResponse()).Returns("Hello!");

var stubClientWrapper = new StubServiceClientWrapper<
    ManagementServiceClient, IManagementService>(
        wcfClient.Object);

var service = new Service(config, stubClientWrapper);

var serviceResponse = service.GetResponse();

Assert.AreEqual("Hello!", serviceResponse);

And there we have it - a unit-testable WCF service client wrapper. Because the stub only overrides the CreateServiceClient method everything else can be unit tested, including the retry and error-handling behaviour.

As mentioned, the new client wrapper is still IDisposable, even though you should never end up with an undisposed WCF client within it; I chose to leave it as IDisposable because classes with disposable members should themselves be disposable.