Question

I’m having trouble using properties in a WCF service. I can define a property in the interface as:

[ServiceContract(Namespace = "http://some-url.com/")]
interface ISomeInterface
{
  [OperationContract]
  int SomeMethod(string someArg);

  int SomeProperty
  {
    [OperationContract]
    get;
  }
}

But when consumed by a client, the property’s underlying method get_SomeProperty() is exposed, rather than as a getter property. Is there a way to tell the client to see it as a property? (Or must I just abandon the use of properties in service contracts?)

Answer 1

In WCF, all you can do is send messages between client and server.

The client never has direct rpc-style access to the server object – therefore, you cannot surface properties or anything like that.

All you can do is serialize messages and send them to a method with the [OperationContract] on them. This cannot be applied to setter methods of properties, I believe.

Marc