Question

I have WCF bassicHttpBiding service .
My web functions are returning some custom defined types.

[DataContract]
public class PcbInfoEntry
{
    [DataMember]
    public int ReflowPcbId { get; set; }
    [DataMember]
    public string PcbId { get; set; }
}

But how actually the client knows the definition of the class ?
What is happening in the proxy that is generated?

Answer 1

The server exposes a WSDL (Web Services Description Language). Simply point your browser to http://example.com/myservice/service.svc?wsdl and you will see the full definition of your service. All the types and methods that it exposes. When generating a client side proxy, svcutil.exe uses this information to generate the corresponding client side proxy classes.

WSDL is a SOAP standard. No matter what language your service is written to, if it exposes a WSDL, you could generate client proxy easily.

WCF can also publish its metadata through a MEX endpoint which implements the WS-Metadata Exchange standard allowing for clients to discover its types.