XmlSerialization for custom type in WCF service - wcf

Question

I'm newbie in WCF. I developed a WCF service and client for it. The service methods will retrieve custom data which uses custom XML serializer. I've read, in this case, contract methods should be marked with [XmlSerializerFormat]:
[ServiceContract]
[XmlSerializerFormat]
public interface ITSService
{
[OperationContract]
[XmlSerializerFormat]
ProtocolDocument GetReferenceData(string referenceType, SerializableDictionary<string, string> args);
ProtocolDocument implements IXmlSerializable:
[XmlRoot("protocol", Namespace = Protocol30Namespace)]
[Type(Name = "protocol", Namespace = Protocol30Namespace)]
public class ProtocolDocument : ProtocolElement, ICloneable, IXmlSerializable
VS 2010 chooses wsHttpBinding by default. I don't need in security, so I turned it off.
Here is the service configuration:
<services>
<service name="MyNamespace.TSService"
behaviorConfiguration="MyNamespace.TSServiceBehavior">
<host>
<baseAddresses>
<add baseAddress = "http://localhost:51944/TSService.svc" />
</baseAddresses>
</host>
<endpoint
address=""
binding="wsHttpBinding"
bindingConfiguration="nonSecurityWSHttpBinding"
contract="MyNamespace.ITSService">
<identity>
<dns value="localhost"/>
</identity>
</endpoint>
<endpoint
address="mex"
binding="mexHttpBinding"
contract="IMetadataExchange"/>
</service>
</services>
<behaviors>
<serviceBehaviors>
<behavior name="MyNamespace.TSServiceBehavior">
<serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" />
<serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" />
</behavior>
</serviceBehaviors>
</behaviors>
<bindings>
<wsHttpBinding>
<binding name="nonSecurityWSHttpBinding">
<security mode="None">
<transport clientCredentialType="None"/>
</security>
</binding>
</wsHttpBinding>
</bindings>
Then I generated the client for this service, but the result could not be deserialized. Fiddler says SOAP wrapped serialized data into GetReferenceDataResult and GetReferenceDataResponse:
<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing">
<s:Header>
<a:Action s:mustUnderstand="1">http://tempuri.org/ITourSystemService/GetReferenceDataResponse</a:Action>
<a:RelatesTo>urn:uuid:3d7f6dc0-4961-4bc5-b1fc-c9997af9fbd4</a:RelatesTo>
</s:Header>
<s:Body xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<GetReferenceDataResponse xmlns="http://tempuri.org/">
<GetReferenceDataResult>
<header version="3.0" language="Russian"/>
<references/>
</GetReferenceDataResult>
</GetReferenceDataResponse>
</s:Body>
</s:Envelope>
But the root element is missing! What should I do?
PS Serialization impl:
void IXmlSerializable.ReadXml(XmlReader reader)
{
var serializer = new ProtocolDocumentXmlSerializer();
serializer.Deserialize(this, reader);
}
void IXmlSerializable.WriteXml(XmlWriter writer)
{
//
// Serialize everything except the root element, because it was already written by .NET XML-serialization mechanism
var xmlSerializationFlags = XmlSerializationFlags.All & ~XmlSerializationFlags.IncludeRootElement;
var serializer = new ProtocolDocumentXmlSerializer();
serializer.Serialize(this, writer, xmlSerializationFlags);
}
Xml-serialization works well. It is already in use. I suppose smth wrong with my WCF-configuration.

Answer 1

You appear to have explicitly told it to ignore your root element in your WriteXml method - that's would be why there is no root element
var xmlSerializationFlags = XmlSerializationFlags.All & ~XmlSerializationFlags.IncludeRootElement;
If you cannot get deserialization to work you can always work at the XML level by using Message as the return type in your client's contract and then call GetReaderAtBody on the message, load the data into XElement and use LINQ to XML to transform the XML into objects to work with at the client side