Question

I decided to open a new question about this matter, maybe expanding this question, not having found a precise answer about the issue anywhere on the Internet.

I want to use protobuf-net to serialize/deserialize messages exchanged between my WCF client and service. The service is self-hosted in a Windows Service. Both client and service are configured programmatically, using a custom binding very similar to wsHttpBinding. Service reference code is generated using “Add Service Reference” option in Visual Studio. The ORM used on the WCF service is EntityFramework 4 and it’s code is generated using EF 4.x POCO Generator. More info about my service configuration can be found in a question I started here (that’s where I described that my current serializer is DataContractSerialzizer).

I have only tested protobuf-net with one service operation which returns a list of custom DTOs.
Here is the operation (be advised that I just did a copy-paste of my code to here, there might be some fields named in my domestic language, not English):

    public static List<OsobaView> GetListOsobas()
    {
        Database DB = new Database(); // EF object context
        var retValue = DB.Baza.Osoba
                       .Select(x => new OsobaView
                       {
                           ID = x.ID,
                           Prezime = x.Prezime,
                           Ime = x.Ime,
                           Adresa = x.Adresa,
                           DatumRodjenja = x.DatumRodjenja,
                           JMBG = x.JMBG
                       });
        return retValue.ToList();
    }

Here is the definition of OsobaView class:

    [ProtoContract]
    public class OsobaView
    {
        [ProtoMember(1)]
        public int ID;
        [ProtoMember(2)]
        public string Prezime;
        [ProtoMember(3)]
        public string Ime;
        [ProtoMember(4)]
        public string Adresa;
        [ProtoMember(5)]
        public DateTime DatumRodjenja;
        [ProtoMember(6)]
        public string JMBG;
    }

As I am using “Add Service Reference” to generate the reference code, I had to use one of the two work-arounds in order to have my client recognize ProtoContracts and members:

• using a shared assembly for DTOs (which is not an ideal solution in my case except for custom DTOs, due to the fact that I pass EF-generated POCOs to the client)
• using ProtoPartialMember approach

I used both of them and I used both v1 and v2 of protobuf-net, all solutions yielded similar results which led me to believe my client is not deserializing at all. Read on.

Let’s consider cases where I used the ProtoPartialMember approach. At first I used v2. I love the way ProtoOperationBehavior can be used. Here is the service operation to be invoked:

    [ProtoBuf.ServiceModel.ProtoBehavior]
    public List<OsobaView> GetListOsobas()
    {
        return OsobaQueries.GetListOsobas();
    }

Here is how I replaced DataContractSerializerOperationBehavior with ProtoOperationBehavior for the needed service operation on client side:

    OperationDescription op = Service.Proxy.Endpoint.Contract.Operations.Find("GetListOsobas");
    if (op != null)
    {
        DataContractSerializerOperationBehavior dcsBehavior = op.Behaviors.Find<DataContractSerializerOperationBehavior>();
        if (dcsBehavior != null)
            op.Behaviors.Remove(dcsBehavior);
        op.Behaviors.Add(new ProtoBuf.ServiceModel.ProtoOperationBehavior(op));
    }

And of course, here is the above mentioned work-around implementation for DTO:

    [ProtoPartialMember(1, "ID")]
    [ProtoPartialMember(2, "Prezime")]
    [ProtoPartialMember(3, "Ime")]
    [ProtoPartialMember(4, "Adresa")]
    [ProtoPartialMember(5, "DatumRodjenja")]
    [ProtoPartialMember(6, "JMBG")]
    [ProtoContract]
    public partial class OsobaView
    {
    }

Now when I call this service operation from my client, I get null. But Fiddler disagrees. It clearly says, in response header:

    Content-Length: 1301963
    Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8

…and in the message body:

    <s:Body>
      <GetListOsobasResponse xmlns="http://tempuri.org/">
        <proto>CkMIpHES .../* REALLY LONG RESPONSE */... IyMDAxOA==</proto>
      </GetListOsobasResponse>
    </s:Body>

Then I thought, let’s try with v1. On the service side, I haven’t changed much. I just removed the reference to v2 .DLL and replaced it with a reference to v1 .DLL. On the client side, I had to remove the code to add ProtoOperationBehavior to my service operation behaviors and added the following line instead:

    Service.Proxy.Endpoint.Behaviors
        .Add(new ProtoBuf.ServiceModel.ProtoEndpointBehavior());

I fired it up, invoked the operation, and this time the result is not null. This time it is a list of blank fields. Again, Fiddler couldn’t agree because it again said the same what it said before. The same content length and the same message body.

What’s going on here?

P.S. If it’s worth anything, here is the WCF configuration:

    CustomBinding customBinding = new CustomBinding();
    customBinding.CloseTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(10);
    customBinding.OpenTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(10);
    customBinding.ReceiveTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(10);
    customBinding.SendTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(10);
    HttpsTransportBindingElement httpsBindingElement = new HttpsTransportBindingElement();
    httpsBindingElement.AllowCookies = false;
    httpsBindingElement.BypassProxyOnLocal = false;
    httpsBindingElement.HostNameComparisonMode = HostNameComparisonMode.StrongWildcard;
    httpsBindingElement.MaxBufferPoolSize = 20480000;
    httpsBindingElement.MaxBufferSize = 20480000;
    httpsBindingElement.MaxReceivedMessageSize = 20480000;
    httpsBindingElement.RequireClientCertificate = true;
    httpsBindingElement.UseDefaultWebProxy = true;
    TransportSecurityBindingElement transportSecurityElement = new TransportSecurityBindingElement();
    transportSecurityElement.EndpointSupportingTokenParameters.SignedEncrypted.Add(new UserNameSecurityTokenParameters());
    transportSecurityElement.EndpointSupportingTokenParameters.SetKeyDerivation(false);
    TransactionFlowBindingElement transactionFlowElement = new TransactionFlowBindingElement();
    TextMessageEncodingBindingElement textMessageEncoding = new TextMessageEncodingBindingElement();
    textMessageEncoding.MaxReadPoolSize = 20480000;
    textMessageEncoding.MaxWritePoolSize = 20480000;
    textMessageEncoding.ReaderQuotas = XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas.Max;
    ReliableSessionBindingElement reliableSessionElement = new ReliableSessionBindingElement();
    reliableSessionElement.ReliableMessagingVersion = ReliableMessagingVersion.WSReliableMessagingFebruary2005;
    customBinding.Elements.Add(transportSecurityElement);
    customBinding.Elements.Add(transactionFlowElement);
    customBinding.Elements.Add(textMessageEncoding);
    customBinding.Elements.Add(reliableSessionElement);
    customBinding.Elements.Add(httpsBindingElement);

    EndpointAddress endpoint = new EndpointAddress(new Uri(ServiceAddress));
    Service.Proxy = new BazaService.BazaClient(customBinding, endpoint);
    Service.Proxy.ClientCredentials.ClientCertificate.SetCertificate(StoreLocation.CurrentUser, StoreName.My, X509FindType.FindBySubjectName, CertificateSubject);
    CustomBehavior behavior = Service.Proxy.Endpoint.Behaviors.Find<CustomBehavior>();
    if (behavior == null)
    {
        Service.Proxy.Endpoint.Behaviors.Add(new CustomBehavior()); // message inspector
    }
    Service.Proxy.Endpoint.Contract.Behaviors.Add(new CyclicReferencesAwareContractBehavior(true));
    Service.Proxy.Endpoint.Behaviors.Add(new ProtoBuf.ServiceModel.ProtoEndpointBehavior());

    /* code used for protobuf-net v2

    OperationDescription op = Service.Proxy.Endpoint.Contract.Operations.Find("GetListOsobas");
    if (op != null)
    {
        DataContractSerializerOperationBehavior dcsBehavior = op.Behaviors.Find<DataContractSerializerOperationBehavior>();
        if (dcsBehavior != null)
            op.Behaviors.Remove(dcsBehavior);
        op.Behaviors.Add(new ProtoBuf.ServiceModel.ProtoOperationBehavior(op));
    } */

    Service.Proxy.ClientCredentials.UserName.UserName = LogOn.UserName;
    Service.Proxy.ClientCredentials.UserName.Password = LogOn.Password;
    Service.Proxy.Open();

EDIT

To provide even more information, I have read what’s written there but it didn’t help. I have deleted the service reference generated by Visual Studio and created my own, sharing the whole service contract, but nothing has changed.

Answer 1

After concentrating a bit better, I decided to restart the solution from scratch. I created one class library for the EDMX with it’s POCOs, one for ServiceContract and DataContracts and one for the actual WCF service implementation. Then I shared those two libraries containing ServiceContract and DataContracts, and POCOs with the WCF client and tried again, which yielded the same results as before. After trying some other operations which didn’t use protobuf-net for serialization, turned out they behaved the same as the first one, resulting in empty fields (!).

The thing was that, I screwed my WCF client’s .datasource files while refactoring after I decided to use the assembly sharing technique. So this was a typical PEBKAC, it of course works fine when done properly. Great work with protobuf-net, Marc Gravell!