Question

When i am testing my WCF web service through “WcfTestClient“, it is showing

“this operation is not supported in wcf test client because it uses type VINDescription“

Where VINDescriptionis a DataContract, which is consist of datamembers of type :

"int, string, ArrayList"

It seems WCF web service is not supporting ArrayList?

Please suggest how can i fix this?

Here is a code snippet of DataContract :

[DataContract]
public class VINDescription
{
    #region Private Members

    private int _cylinders = 0;
    private string _msrp = string.Empty;
    private ArrayList _interior = new ArrayList();
    private string[][] _showOptionalEquipment = new string[][] { };

    #endregion

    #region Public Data Members

    /// <summary>
    /// Stores the number of cylinders of a decoded vehicle.
    /// </summary>
    [DataMember]
    public int Cylinders
    {
        get
        {
            return _cylinders;
        }
        set
        {
            _cylinders = value;
        }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Stores the MSRP cost of a decoded vehicle.
    /// </summary>
    [DataMember]
    public string MSRP
    {
        get
        {
            return _msrp;
        }
        set
        {
            _msrp = value;
        }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Stores the interior values of a decoded vehicle.
    /// </summary>
    [DataMember]
    public ArrayList Interior
    {
        get
        {
            _interior.Sort();
            return _interior;
        }
        set
        {
            _interior = value;
        }
    }



    /// <summary>
    /// To store the data for show optional equipments.
    /// </summary>
    [DataMember]
    public string[][] ShowOptionalEquipment
    {
        get
        {
            return _showOptionalEquipment;
        }
        set
        {
            _showOptionalEquipment = value;
        }
    }

Answer 1

The way I understand it, WCF actually supports your data contract, but the WCF Test Client tool does not support everything that WCF itself supports, hence the error. Not sure if it’s because of ArrayList, string[][], or something else, but in any case it seems to be a tool limitation, not a framework limitation.