Question

I have WCF service that uses raw messages (Message class).

1) Service side:

[DataContract]
public class Person
{
    [DataMember]
    public int Id { get; set; }

    [DataMember]
    public string FirstName { get; set; }

    [DataMember]
    public string LastName { get; set; }
}

[ServiceContract]
public interface ITestService
{
    [OperationContract(Action = TestService.RequestAction3)]
    void AddNewPerson(Message newPerson);

public void AddNewPerson(Message newPerson)
{
    Person personToAdd = newPerson.GetBody<Person>();
    Employees.Persons.Add(personToAdd);
}

2) Client side:

TestServiceClient client = new TestServiceClient();

String RequestAction3 = "http://localhost:4249/Message_RequestAction3";
TestService.Person person = new TestService.Person
{
    Id = 6,
    FirstName = "Aleksey",
    LastName = "Alekseyev"
};

Message request3 = Message.CreateMessage(MessageVersion.Default, RequestAction3, person);
string soapRequest = request3.ToString();
client.AddNewPerson(request3);

What’s the problem here? I have Person class (data contract) on service side that is placed in TestService namespace: TestService.Person. Everything is fine on service side. But after I added service reference to client side by using “Add Service Reference…” option in VS2008, there’s no such a type (TestService.Person) on client side. What I did to resolve this issue? I’ve simply copied the file with original data contract (TestService.Person) on client side, created object of Person type and passed it to the service method.

My question is – did I do it in correct way or there is another way to do this?

Thank you in advance.

Goran

Answer 1

Because Person class is not exposed in none of your service contracts their information is not shared via service metadata. That’s why you get an error on the client side. If you copy the classes to your client with the same namespace that will do.

However a better solution is to place Person class in another assembly and reference this assembly from your client.