return xdocument from wcf service

Question

How can i return xdocument from wcf service??? what i need to do to let wxf service's method return a object of xdocument?

Answer 1

You can't. XDocument does not implements IXmlSerializable. XElement implement IXmlSerializable so you can transfer it through WCF.

You can also transfer a string instead of the XDocument and parse it locally.

Ex :

Server :

public string DoSomething()
{
    XDocument myXDocument = new XDocument();

    // Do stuff

    return myXDocument.ToString();
}

Client :

XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(myWebService.DoSomething());

Answer 2

You can also return an XElement object.

    public XElement DoSomething()
    {
        XDocument myXDocument = new XDocument();

        //  Load the XDocument.

        return myXDocument.Root;
    }