I have a class, ReportDef, which is a concrete class that I've decorated with [DataContract] and [DataMember] attributes as needed. ReportDef is in assembly A1 along with my ServiceContract, IReportService. I then have another class, UiReportDef, which derives from ReportDef and is in assembly A2. UiReportDef has no additional state that the service cares about.
I want to invoke my service with an instance of UiReportDef. Is there any way (short of manually constructing a ReportDef instance from UiReportDef) to do this without having my service know about A2? I know about KnownType. I don't want to reference A2.
EDIT: Here's some context that might make my question easier to understand. My ServiceContract implements IReportService which defines a method, RunReport(ReportDef report). ReportDef is decorated with the DataContract attribute, and has private members decorated with DataMember. UiReportDef is in an assembly that depends on UI-related assemblies, etc. I didn't design the existing class hierarchy. I need to pass ReportDefs and UiReportDefs (as ReportDefs) to the new service. Since ReportDef is concrete, I would expect the serializer to treat UiReportDefs as ReportDefs in the absence of any other information.
I didn't understand you question.
But I think I understand part of it now, you want to deserialize an object in an assembly that has no reference to it?
If so, you can't unless you're willing to do a whole lot of reflection and keep it defined/referenced as "object"
The common way to do this and was trying to explain in my previous answer is that you should use an interface that can be referenced by both client/server.
It is common practice to create stub assemblies consisting of nothing but interfaces for this case.
Or as your comment on your question suggests, you can use DTO objects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Transfer_Object
This thread may probably help a lot : WCF Inheritance and DataContract
WCF is not polymorphic because its not object oriented. Hence this is not possible.
Related
I built a number of WCF services as part of an application. Until recently, most of the classes that were used as parameters of the many operations in a service did not had the DataContract or DataMember attributes applied to them.
Now, I've made a few changes in a row and all of a sudden WCF is complaining that he can't serialize my classes.
Does anyone knows if any changes in configuration or even in the ServiceContract, OperationContract etc. can cause WCF to become picky about the classes it can serialize?
I'd rather not need the attributes in those classes (they should be pure C# classes as possible).
Also of note, if I return to a previous version in my source control, WCF goes back to "normal", so I believe that it's not a machine/environment thing.
The ability to create WCF Data Contracts without the use of the [DataContract] and [DataMember] attributes is a feature added to WCF in .NET 3.5 SP1. Since everything works for you when reverting your code to a previous version, I'm assuming you are already using at least that version.
Nevertheless, in order for classes to be serializable by WCF, the class must meet several requirements listed here. The main requirements of the data contract class are:
It must be public.
It must have a parameterless constructor.
It must not have any data members that do not meet all these requirements. If you do have such a member, mark it with [IgnoreDataMember] and it will be excluded from WCF serialization.
You can get more information about what fails to serialize by performing the serialization manually using the DataContractSerializer class. See this article for more details and code examples. Another method is to mark all members with [IgnoreDataMember] and gradually remove the attributes from members until serialization fails, which will tell you which member is causing the problem.
WCF is lenient towards classes that have [serializable] attribute. You don't require [DataContract]. You must have added something that is not serializable.
I know a way to do that. it's not professional but it works for me
I'm also need pure c# classes so I do it in this way.
I convert each parameter of my class to an object then gather them into array of objects and send it to the other side. in the other side I do the reverse operation to get my parameters back. but this operation will reduce the performance i think
What is the benefit of keeping attribute in WCF service?
What I mean is why to give them [Datamember] and [Datacontract] and what's advantage and disadvantage?
What happens if I make attributes and its class in different project with simple class library project and I insert its "dll" reference to WCF service class library, which contains all operation that are [ServiceContract] and [operatinconntract] on this attribute.
WCF parameters need to be serializable. Value types such as int and string will be by default and therefore just work.
DataContractAttribute is used to mark complex types as serializable. See Using Data Contracts for more information.
Pre-WCF, serialization was done using the XmlSerializer class and by marking a type as [Serializable] it meant that all members were serialized by default.
However with DataContractSerializer which is the preferred serializer used in WCF, members of a class will not be serialized unless indicated.
Re having contract types in a different assembly - yes this is possible, and actually it's best practice to keep your contract types separate from your service implementation assembly.
A class that has the [DataContract] attribute, is it not automatically serialized?
If not, is it a requirement to use the [Serializable] attribute (or inherit from ISerialize)?
I ask this because I have old code from a previous project that apparently the [DataContract] classes do not mention anything, explicitly, about serialization.
The ultimate question:
I want a WCF operation (method) to return a DataContract class.
Does the method have to explicitly serialize the class before returning it, or is it automatically serialized? I always thought it would be the latter.
Thanks!
No, [Serializable] is not necessary on a data contract. It is also not necessary for XML Serialization.
There's a few options for serialization in .NET. SerializableAttribute and ISerializable go back to the beginning and are used by the BinaryFormatter, SoapFormatter, etc.
DataContractSerializer, being relatively new, can support objects that define their serialization ability with SerializableAttribute, but it's not necessary. If you are just serializing the object using DataContractSerializer then using the data contract attributes is all you need to do.
Obviously the members you mark as serializable must also be of serializable types.
For more information, see Types Supported by the Data Contract Serializer on MSDN.
Just to add on to this, DataContractSerializer supports far more than just DataContract types. See this excellent blog post for a detailed walk-through of the entire universe of types supported by DataContractSerializer: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sowmy/archive/2006/02/22/536747.aspx
I have several classes such as Order, Customer, etc. These classes serve for holding data and nothing more. I want to be able to reuse these classes in other projects in the future, but for some reason I don't quite understand, WCF forces me to decorate the data members with the [DataMember] attribute, forcing me to reference WCF plumbing that I will never use in other projects.
I would imagine that WCF lets you take any serializable class and use it as a content type. Am I understanding this correctly?
Yes, with .NET 3.5 SP1, the WCF DataContractSerializer will now serialize any POCO class just the same way as the XmlSerializer will - any public property will be serialized.
I don't know for sure whether that's a good thing - one of the pillars of WCF is being explicit, in order to clearly state your intent. I personally find it a good thing to mark your classes with [DataContract] and your fields and properties you want to have serialized explicitly with [DataMember] - it makes it clearer as to what's going on, and it doesn't hurt your POCO class at all.
And btw: you don't have to reference any "WCF plumbing" to do this - those attributes live in System.Runtime.Serialization - a very generic system assembly.....
Given the fact that I have a fully dynamic object model, that is, I have no concrete classes defined anywhere in code, but I still want to be able to create WCF DataContracts for them so I can use them in operations. How can I achieve this?
My concrete class "Entity" implements ICustomTypeDescriptor which is used to present the various properties to the outside world, but my expeimentation with WCF suggests that WCF does not care about ICustomTypeDescriptor. Is this correct or have I missed something?
Is this possible? It cannot be so that the only way to create a DataContract is to actually have a concrete harcoded class, can it?
you may use untyped service and message contract IIRC http://geekswithblogs.net/claeyskurt/archive/2008/09/24/125430.aspx
You might try System.Reflection.Emit.
Its quite tricky, but essentially you will just build a custom run-time type, with decorated data contract attributes. It gets tricky when creating encapsulated properties with PropertyChanged notifications, but in your service layer you can just get away with auto properties which are a lot easier.
This dated, but still very relevant link should get you going in the right direction.
http://drdobbs.com/184416570
Things evolve :-) Thanks to the excellent blog series by Alex D James its very easy to implement this.