WCF - serializing inherited types - wcf

Question

I have these classes:
[DataContract]
public class ErrorBase {}
[DataContract]
public class FileMissingError: ErrorBase {}
[DataContract]
public class ResponseFileInquiry
{
[DataMember]
public List<ErrorBase> errors {get;set;};
}
An instance of the class ResponseFileInquiry is what my service method returns to the client. Now, if I fill ResponseFileInquiry.errors with instances of ErrorBase, everything works fine, but if I add an instance of inherited type FileMissingError, I get a service side exception during serialization:
Type 'MyNamespace.FileMissingError' with data contract name 'FileMissingError'
is not expected. Add any types not known statically to the list of known types -
for example, by using the KnownTypeAttribute attribute or by adding them to the
list of known types passed to DataContractSerializer.'
So serializer is getting confused because it's expecting the List to contain the declared type objects (ErrorBase) but it's getting inherited type (FileMissingError) objects.
I have the whole bunch of error types and the List will contain combinations of them, so what can I do to make it work?

Answer 1

You should add KnownType attribute to your base class
[DataContract]
[KnownType(typeof(FileMissingError))]
public class ErrorBase {}
Read more about KnownType attribute in this blog

Answer 2

Try this:
[DataContract]
[KnownType(typeof(FileMissingError))]
public class ErrorBase {}
As the error message states, any information that cannot be know statically (like the polymorphic relationship you have expressed here) must be supplied via attributes. In this case you need to specify that your FileMissingError data contract is a known type of its base class, ErrorBase.

Answer 3

A tad bit late, but maybe for future generations. =)
If you don't want to add an attribute for every child class to your parent class, you could construct a list of known types in the parent classes static constructor using
IEnumerable<Assembly> assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain
.GetAssemblies()
.Where(a => !a.GlobalAssemblyCache);
IEnumerable<Type> serializableTypes = assemblies.SelectMany(a => a.GetTypes())
.Where(t => IsSerializable(t));
// ...
private static bool IsSerializable(Type type)
{
return type.GetCustomAttributes(true).Any(a => a is DataContractAttribute);
}
and pass this list to the de/serializers constructor. I don't know how robust this solution is, but that's what I am doing and so far it works. It is a little slow, so make sure to cache the result.