Calling an IFS SOAP web service from C# using WebRequest/WebResponse, a 500 Internal Server Error response's actual SOAP fault details are visible when testing with a dedicated SOAP testing tool, but the same error details aren't visible when the same call is made through .NET's WebResponse/WebRequest classes directly — the caught exception just shows a generic message with no fault body.

Q: Calling an IFS SOAP web service from C# using WebRequest/WebResponse, a 500 Internal Server Error response's actual SOAP fault details are visible when testing with a dedicated SOAP testing tool, but the same error details aren't visible when the same call is made through .NET's WebResponse/WebRequest classes directly — the caught exception just shows a generic message with no fault body.

Catch the specific WebException type, rather than a generic Exception, and when it has a Response object attached, which it does for HTTP error status codes like 500, read that response's stream via a StreamReader to capture the full response body text — this is exactly where the detailed SOAP fault information lives, and a WebException's bare .Message property alone doesn't include it. Reading ex.Response.GetResponseStream() this way surfaces the same detailed fault content a dedicated SOAP testing tool shows directly.

Answer

Catch the specific WebException type, rather than a generic Exception, and when it has a Response object attached, which it does for HTTP error status codes like 500, read that response's stream via a StreamReader to capture the full response body text — this is exactly where the detailed SOAP fault information lives, and a WebException's bare .Message property alone doesn't include it. Reading ex.Response.GetResponseStream() this way surfaces the same detailed fault content a dedicated SOAP testing tool shows directly.

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