Sending complex type as a parameter in SOAP message

Question

I have a WCF Service like following:

 public class Service1 : IService1
{
    public string GetData(Person person)
    {
        if (person != null)
        {
            return "OK";
        }
        return "Not OK!";
    }

Here is my Person class:

 [DataContract]
public class Person
{
    [DataMember]
    public int Age { get; set; }

    [DataMember]
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

And I'm calling service like that:

 BasicHttpBinding binding = new BasicHttpBinding(BasicHttpSecurityMode.None);
        IChannelFactory<IRequestChannel> factory = binding.BuildChannelFactory<IRequestChannel>(new BindingParameterCollection());
        factory.Open();

        EndpointAddress address = new EndpointAddress(url);
        IRequestChannel irc = factory.CreateChannel(address);
        using (irc as IDisposable)
        {
            irc.Open();
            string soapMessage = "<GetData><person><Age>24</Age><Name>John</Name></person></GetData>";

            XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(new StringReader(soapMessage));
            Message m = Message.CreateMessage(MessageVersion.Soap11,"http://tempuri.org/IService1/GetData", reader);

            Message ret = irc.Request(m);
            reader.Close();
            return ret.ToString();
        }

When I try to send complex type like Person as a parameter to GetData method, person object is coming null. But I have no problem when I send known type like integer, string etc. as a parameter.

How can I manage to send complex type as a parameter to the service method?

Answer 1

I ran into a similar situation, and we ended up changing the interface of the service to be the equivalent of:

public string GetData(string person)

And we did our own object serialization before calling the web service. Immediately within the web service method we would deserialize it, and proceed as normal.