Question

I’m not sure WCF being involved is significant or not.

I have a class and method exposed to a client asp.net app. The class looks like

<DataContract()> _
Public Class Class1
  Private v_string As String
  Private v_integer As Integer

  Public Sub New()
      v_string = ""
      v_integer = -1
  End Sub

  <DataMember()> _
  Public Property P_String() As String
    Get
        Return v_string
    End Get
    Set(ByVal value As String)
       v_string = value
    End Set
  End Property

  <DataMember()> _
  Public Property P_Integer() As Integer
    Get
        Return v_integer
    End Get
    Set(ByVal value As Integer)
       v_integer = value
    End Set
  End Property
End Class

The method is declared as

<OperationContract()> _
Function GetStuff(ByVal bar As Class1) As String

In the client code I create an instance of Class1 and set the values for v_string and v_integer, but using Wireshark to look at the xml being sent to the server only a value for v_string is being sent as part of Class1. I’m guessing this is because it considers the value of v_integer to be null/not set. Here is an example of the client code.

Dim MyService as New Service1.ServiceClient
Dim test as New Service1.Class1
test.P_integer = 1
test.P_string = "hello"
Dim result as String = MyService.GetStuff(test)

I’m guessing this is a problem with how different types are passed/used since Integer is a intergral type and String is a class, but can’t seem to work out what to do to fix the problem.

Answer 1

A colleague of mine found that everthing works properly we change the decorations for the data members from:

<DataMember()>_
Public Property P_Integer() As Integer
...
End Property

To:

<DataMember(IsRequired:=True)> _
Public Property P_Integer() As Integer
...
End Property

for all value types. Class types such as string work fine without this.