Basic WCF operation interception

This article will present a basic implementation of WCF operation interception. The interception is possible by implementing two interfaces, IParameterInspector and IOperationBehavior. Strictly speaking, only the interface IOperationBehavior is required for this, but this sample will present the use of IParameterInspector interface also to intercept the operation before and after the call. The following code shows how to create a sample WCF operation interception as an attribute that can be applied on a target operation in a WCF service contract.

 public class SampleOperationBehaviorAttribute : Attribute, IOperationBehavior, IParameterInspector
    {

        public void AddBindingParameters(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Channels.BindingParameterCollection bindingParameters)
        {
        }

        public void ApplyClientBehavior(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ClientOperation clientOperation)
        {
            clientOperation.ParameterInspectors.Add(this); 
        }

        public void ApplyDispatchBehavior(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.DispatchOperation dispatchOperation)
        {
            dispatchOperation.ParameterInspectors.Add(this);
        }

        public void Validate(OperationDescription operationDescription)
        {
        }

        public void AfterCall(string operationName, object[] outputs, object returnValue, object correlationState)
        {
            Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("After call of operation {0}", operationName));
        }

        public object BeforeCall(string operationName, object[] inputs)
        {
            Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("Before call of operation {0}", operationName));
            return null;
        }

    }

As the code above shows, inheriting from Attribute class allows using the code as an attribute on the target operation. Furthermore, implementing IOperationBehavior and IParameterInspector in the same class allows easy adding the parameterinspector instance in the ApplyDispatchBehavior and ApplyClientBehavior. Finally, the last step is attributing a target operation in the service contract. The sample service will then look for example like this:

 
    [ServiceContract]
    public interface IService1
    {

        [SampleOperationBehavior]
        [OperationContract]
        string GetData(int value);
     
    }