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c#wcfnamespacespolymorphism
Chris Hayes
Chris Hayes

Reputation: 4035

WCF Contracts and Polymorphism with different namespaces: what gives?

How do I perform polymorphism in a scenario like this:

if I have a class Dachshund in namespace Foo that is inherited from class Dog in namespace Bar:

namespace Bar
{
  public class Dog
  {
    public string Color { get; set; }
    public string Bark { get; set; }
  }
}

namespace Foo
{
  public class Dachshund : Dog
  {
    public int Length { get; set; }
  }
}

and I use Dachshund to do some dog stuff but pass it through wcf as a dog, what gives? some serialization issues:

[ServiceBehavior]
public class myWcfService : ImyWcfService
{
  [OperationBehavior]
  public Message GetDog()
  {
    var myDach = new Dachshund();
    // do some stuff with my dach
    return new Message { Dog = myDach as Dog, Message = "I'm sending a dog" };
  }
}

public class Message
{
  public Dog Dog { get; set; }
  public string Message { get; set; }
}

Upvotes: 0

Views: 140

Answers (1)

Fede
Fede

Reputation: 44048

You need to add the [ServiceKnownType] attribute to your service contract (the interface that defines the service operations, rather than the service implementation (the actual class):

[ServiceContract]
[ServiceKnownType(typeof(Dachshund))]  // <- Add this attribute
public interface ImyWcfService
{
   //...
}

this will be enough for the DataContractSerializer to "know" your class and be able to properly serialize / deserialize it.

Upvotes: 1

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