Question

I have a WCF service with the following method:

[OperationContract]
TernaryWebServiceResponse<long> ModifyObservations(...);

Response object is as following:

[DataContract]
public class TernaryWebServiceResponse<T>
{
    [DataMember]
    public TernaryProcessingResultStatus ProcessingSuccessStatus { get; set; }

    [DataMember]
    public Dictionary<T, bool> ProcessingSuccessDetails { get; set; } 
}

This class is defined in a shared assembly and WCF reference is configured to reuse it.

But when I generate the proxy, I get something like this:

Custom tool warning: Cannot import wsdl:portType Detail: An exception
was thrown while running a WSDL import extension:
System.ServiceModel.Description.DataContractSerializerMessageContractImporter
Error: Referenced type ‘TernaryWebServiceResponse`1, General,
Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null’ with data
contract name ‘TernaryWebServiceResponseOflong’ in namespace
‘http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/Genaral.SoapCommunication’
cannot be used since it does not match imported DataContract. Need to
exclude this type from referenced types.

Can somebody plz explain me, what is exactly the problem here? I know that generics can be used in WCF contracts as long as they are resolved, e.g. not MyObj<T> but MyObj<long>. So what’s wrong with this class? Is it that T defined on the class cannot be somehow resolved on the dictionary?

Answer 1

Maybe defining a new contract will help.
Something like:

[DataContract] 
public class LongTernaryWebServiceResponse : TernaryWebServiceResponse<long> 
{ 
}

And then in your service contract something like:

[OperationContract]
LongTernaryWebServiceResponse ModifyObservations(...);