Question

By default, WCF deserializes missing elements into default values like null, 0 or false. The problem with this approach is that if it’s a basic type like number 0 I’m not sure whether it means the real value sent by an external system or a default value generated by WCF.

So my question is: Is it possible to find out at run-time whether the default value means “I didn’t send anything”.

This is crucial because we can’t update and overwrite existing data in the database with the default values just because the external system didn’t send a particular element this time (data corruption).

Microsoft’s short answer is “It is up to the receiving endpoint to appropriately interpret a missing element.”

Data member default values
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa347792.aspx

Can somebody please clarify what’s that supposed to mean?

Thanks

Answer 1

If you define your data members as properties, you can use whether the setter was called or not to decide whether some value was sent. The code below shows one data contract which knows whether it deserialized its fields.

public class Post_51ca1ead_2f0a_4912_a451_374daab0101b
{
    [DataContract(Name = "Person", Namespace = "")]
    public class Person
    {
        string name;
        int age;
        bool nameWasSent;
        bool ageWasSent;

        [DataMember]
        public string Name
        {
            get
            {
                return this.name;
            }

            set
            {
                this.nameWasSent = true;
                this.name = value;
            }
        }

        [DataMember]
        public int Age
        {
            get
            {
                return this.age;
            }

            set
            {
                this.ageWasSent = true;
                this.age = value;
            }
        }

        [OnDeserializing]
        void OnDeserializing(StreamingContext ctx)
        {
            this.ageWasSent = false;
            this.nameWasSent = false;
        }

        public override string ToString()
        {
            return string.Format("Person[Name={0},Age={1}]",
                nameWasSent ? name : "UNSPECIFIED",
                ageWasSent ? age.ToString() : "UNSPECIFIED");
        }
    }

    public static void Test()
    {
        MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
        DataContractSerializer dcs = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(Person));
        dcs.WriteObject(ms, new Person { Name = "John", Age = 30 });
        Console.WriteLine(Encoding.UTF8.GetString(ms.ToArray()));

        string noAge = "<Person><Name>John</Name></Person>";
        ms = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(noAge));
        object p = dcs.ReadObject(ms);
        Console.WriteLine("No age: {0}", p);

        string noName = "<Person><Age>45</Age></Person>";
        ms = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(noName));
        p = dcs.ReadObject(ms);
        Console.WriteLine("No name: {0}", p);
    }
}