WCF Service Reference does not reuse types in existing assemblies (VS 2010 Beta 2)

visual studio 2010wcf

I'm looking for the best approach to share types (the actual classes, not proxies) between a WCF service and a client. To that end, I defined the classes in a separate assembly that both service and client reference. I selected "Reuse types in all referenced assemblies" when generating the service reference in the client, but References.cs is generated with proxies for all classes.

This is exactly the same question as this one, but I don't know how to implement the accepted solution. One difference is that I'm using VS 2010 Beta 2.

import the complete service contract
in code form

create your own ClientBase-derived class. It's really very easy

Assuming this is the best approach, I would appreciate a good link that covers how to do this. Is the approach outlined in the linked answer the best one?

Best Answer

I did two things in the same step. Not sure if one or both resolved the problem:

Added a [DataContract(Namespace="My.Shared.Assemblys.Namespace")] to one of the classes in the shared assembly.
Restarted VS 2010 Beta 2

Related Solutions

Wcf – Reuse types in current assembly for WCF Proxies

If I understand what you want to do, then it's an scenario I commonly run into, and well, WCF does have a decent answer to: Just don't use SvcUtil / WS Service Reference wizards.

If you have most of the contract classes already defined in your client side (be that because you have a shared assembly or because you have equivalent classes defined on your project), you might as well just go to the next step and either import the complete service contract in code form or simply redefine it on the client side.

There's nothing that forces you to use svcutil and friends, just define your interface and either use the channel model directly (i.e. ChannelFactory<T> and friends) or, if you prefer to use proxy classes, just create your own ClientBase<T>-derived class. It's really very easy and it will save you trouble in the long run.

C# – WCF Service Reference generates its own contract interface, won’t reuse mine

"Reuse types in referenced assemblies" only allows you to reuse Data Contracts, not Service Contracts. If you want to share Service Contracts, you don't need to use "Add Service Reference" at all. You can just use ChannelFactory directly.

// Supply the binding and address in code
Binding binding = new BasicHttpBinding();
EndpointAddress address = new EndpointAddress("http://tempuri.org/address");
IServiceContract channel = ChannelFactory<IServiceContract>.CreateChannel(binding, address);

// Or read them from the config file
ChannelFactory<IServiceContract> channelFactory = new ChannelFactory<IServiceContract>();
IServiceContract channel = channelFactory.CreateChannel();

The channel object will also implement ICommunicationObject, so you can cast it if you need to call methods like Open() or Close().

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Wcf – Reuse types in current assembly for WCF Proxies

C# – WCF Service Reference generates its own contract interface, won’t reuse mine

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