Question

I have been trying to get the following code to work(everything is defined in the same assembly) :

namespace SomeApp{

public class A : MarshalByRefObject
{
   public byte[] GetSomeData() { // }
}

public class B : MarshalByRefObject
{
   private A remoteObj;

   public void SetA(A remoteObj)
   {
      this.remoteObj = remoteObj;
   }
}

public class C
{
   A someA = new A();
   public void Init()
   {
       AppDomain domain = AppDomain.CreateDomain("ChildDomain");
       string currentAssemblyPath = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location;
       B remoteB = domain.domain.CreateInstanceFromAndUnwrap(currentAssemblyPath,"SomeApp.B") as B;
       remoteB.SetA(someA); // this throws an ArgumentException "Object type cannot be converted to target type."
   }
}

}

What I’m trying to do is pass a reference of an ‘A’ instance created in the first AppDomain to the child domain and have the child domain execute a method on the first domain. In some point on ‘B’ code I’m going to call ‘remoteObj.GetSomeData()’. This has to be done because the ‘byte[]’ from ‘GetSomeData’ method must be ‘calculated’ on the first appdomain.
What should I do to avoid the exception, or what can I do to achieve the same result?

Answer 1

I can duplicate the issue, and it seems to be related to TestDriven.net and/or xUnit.net. If I run C.Init() as a test method, I get the same error message. However, if I run C.Init() from a console application, I do not get the exception.

Are you seeing the same thing, running C.Init() from a unit test?

Edit: I’m also able to duplicate the issue using NUnit and TestDriven.net. I’m also able to duplicate the error using the NUnit runner instead of TestDriven.net. So the problem seems to be related to running this code through a testing framework, though I’m not sure why.