Question

I’m using a class library that exposes a few objects. These objects have a couple of properties that hold data my clients need. I’d like to create a WCF service that returns the objects to my clients but I cannot update the class library in order to add the DataContract and DataMember attributes. What is the easiest way of exposing these objects?

Answer 1

You can use a DataContractSurrogate.

…You can apply the DataContract
attribute to the Person class, but
this is not always possible. For
example, the Person class can be
defined in a separate assembly over
which you have no control.

Given this restriction, one way to
serialize the Person class is to
substitute it with another class that
is marked with DataContractAttribute
and copy over necessary data to the
new class. The objective is to make
the Person class appear as a
DataContract to the
DataContractSerializer. Note that this
is one way to serialize non-data
contract classes. …