Question

I am attempting to create a wcf service that accepts any input (Action=”*”) and then deserialize the message after determining its type. For the purposes of testing deserialization I am currently hard-coding the type for the test service.

I get no errors from the deserialization process, but only the outer object is populated after deserialization occurs. All inner fields are null. I can process the same request against the original wcf service successfully.

I am deserializing this way, where knownTypes is a type list of expected types:

DataContractSerializer ser = new DataContractSerializer(new createEligibilityRuleSet ().GetType(), knownTypes);
createEligibilityRuleSet newReq = buf.CreateMessage().GetBody<createEligibilityRuleSet>(ser);

Here is the class and sub-classes of the request object. These classes are generated by svcutil using a top down approach from an existing wsdl. I have tried replacing the XmlTypeAttributes with DataContracts and the XmlElements with DataMembers with no difference. It is the instance of CreateEligibilityRuleSetSvcRequest on the createEligibilityRuleSet object that is null. I have included the request retrieved from the request at the bottom

/// <remarks/>
[System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("svcutil", "3.0.4506.2152")]
[System.SerializableAttribute()]
[System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThroughAttribute()]
[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code")]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(AnonymousType = true, Namespace = "http://RulesEngineServicesLibrary/RulesEngineServices")]
public partial class createEligibilityRuleSet
{

private CreateEligibilityRuleSetSvcRequest requestField;

/// <remarks/>
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute(Form = System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaForm.Unqualified, IsNullable = true, Order = 0)]
public CreateEligibilityRuleSetSvcRequest request
{
    get
    {
 return this.requestField;
    }
    set
    {
 this.requestField = value;
    }
}
}

/// <remarks/>
[System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("svcutil", "3.0.4506.2152")]
[System.SerializableAttribute()]
[System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThroughAttribute()]
[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code")]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(Namespace = "http://RulesEngineServicesLibrary")]
public partial class CreateEligibilityRuleSetSvcRequest : RulesEngineServicesSvcRequest
{

private string requestField;

/// <remarks/>
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute(Form = System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaForm.Unqualified, Order = 0)]

public string request
{
    get
    {
 return this.requestField;
    }
    set
    {
 this.requestField = value;
    }
}
}

[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(CreateEligibilityRuleSetSvcRequest))]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(ApplyMemberEligibilitySvcRequest))]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(CreateCompletionCriteriaRuleSetSvcRequest))]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(CopyRuleSetSvcRequest))]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(DeleteRuleSetByIDSvcRequest))]
[System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("svcutil", "3.0.4506.2152")]
[System.SerializableAttribute()]
[System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThroughAttribute()]
[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code")]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(Namespace = "http://RulesEngineServicesLibrary")]
public partial class RulesEngineServicesSvcRequest : ServiceRequest
{
}

/// <remarks/>
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(RulesEngineServicesSvcRequest))]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(CreateEligibilityRuleSetSvcRequest))]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(ApplyMemberEligibilitySvcRequest))]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(CreateCompletionCriteriaRuleSetSvcRequest))]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(CopyRuleSetSvcRequest))]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(DeleteRuleSetByIDSvcRequest))]
[System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("svcutil", "3.0.4506.2152")]
[System.SerializableAttribute()]
[System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThroughAttribute()]
[System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code")]
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(Namespace = "http://FELibrary")]
public partial class ServiceRequest
{

private string applicationIdField;

/// <remarks/>
[System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute(Form = System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaForm.Unqualified, Order = 0)]

public string applicationId
{
    get
    {
 return this.applicationIdField;
    }
    set
    {
 this.applicationIdField = value;
    }
}
}

Request from client comes on Message body as below. Retrieved from Message at runtime.

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:rul="http://RulesEngineServicesLibrary/RulesEngineServices">
<soap:Header/>
   <soap:Body>
      <rul:createEligibilityRuleSet>
         <request>
            <applicationId>test</applicationId>
            <request>Perf Rule Set1</request>
         </request>
      </rul:createEligibilityRuleSet>
   </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Answer 1

The specific problem you’re seeing is that DataContract doesn’t know how to handle unqualified elements. But XmlSerializer does, and your classes are properly attributed for XmlSerializer.

So you should use XmlSerializer instead of DataContractSerializer to deserialize the body contents:

public static T GetBodyWithXmlSerializer<T>(this Message msg)
{
    var ser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
    T o;
    using (var reader = msg.GetReaderAtBodyContents())
    {
        o = (T)ser.Deserialize(reader);
    }
    return o;
}