Webservice error messages

Question

Hi All
I am using a web service to feed my flex application with
data. When exceptions occur in the web service, I only get some
generic error message in my fault handler. I would like to be able
to get information such as error messages from the web service
exceptions propagated to my web service fault handlers in my Flex
Application.
My web service is .Net based/C# and it is used in my Flex app
by importing the WSDL file of the service.
Here is an example with some code snippets:
The web service has a HelloWorld webmethod which throws an
exception. This webservice is imported into my flex app using the
Data->Import Webservice feature, which autogenerates the
webserivce class I am using. When I call the webservice from Flex,
the fault handler is called but it only contains some generic error
message.
Code snippets: The C# webservice method which throws an
exception:
[WebMethod]
public string HelloWorld()
throw new Exception("Hello World Exception.");
return "Hello World";
And here is how I call the webservice in my FIex App:
private function btnTestWebserviceClicked(event:Event):void
var service:WebService = new WebService();
service.addWebServiceFaultEventListener(faultHandler);
service.addhelloWorldEventListener(webMethodDone);
service.helloWorld();
function webMethodDone(event:HelloWorldResultEvent):void
Alert.show("Done", "Done");
function faultHandler(event:FaultEvent):void
Alert.show(event.fault.faultString, "Error");
The information I can get from the faultEvent passed to the
fault handler does not contain the error string but only the
generic "HTTP request error" error message, and not the
“Hello World Error String” which was passed to the
exception thrown in the webservice.
So my question is: How can I get information from web service
exceptions propagated to my fault handlers in Flex?
Any help, advice or pointers to articles will be much
appreciated.
Best regards Stig Nielsson

Answer 1

Hi Stig,
The root cause of the problem is that the body of the 500
status code isn't returned to the flash player from the browsers.
This prevents the Flash Player from passing it along to you. Keep
in mind that the FlashPlayer is just a control that runs within the
browser; as a result it's restricted by what the browser provides
to it. The body of a 500 error message isn't one of the things
provided to it.
The Flash Player needs to play to the least common
denominator and while some browsers do provide the web service's
500 error body the Flash Player requires ubiquity. This is why the
feature isn't implemented within the Flash Player... when all
browsers provide this data then Adobe needs to add the feature.
Adobe has logged a bug on these issues with the browser companies.
To workaround the issue use LCDS or BlazeDS as proxies. They
have been coded to return a 200 status response instead of the 500
error allowing you to access the error message. Adobe has been
aware of this issue and this is the suggested resolution to the
problem. It's not ideal but it's the best we currently have
available.
Here's a great article that talks about this:
http://blog.flexmonkeypatches.com/2008/05/16/soap-fault-messages-in-flexflash-player-error -2032-stream-error/
-Kurt.